THIS  MORTAL  COIL 


A  NOVEL 


BY 

GRANT  ALLEN 


CHICAGO 

THE  HENNEBERRY  COMPANY 
554  WABASH  AVENUE 


CONTENTS. 


Page 

Chapter  I. — Bohemia   * 1 

Chapter  II. — Down  Stream 12 

Chapter  III. — Arcadia 21 

Chapter  IV.— Buridan's  Ass   31 

Chapter  V.— Elective  Affinities    \ 40 

Chapter  VI.— Which  Lady?  52 

Chapter  VII. — Friends   in  Council 65 

Chapter  VIII.— The  Roads  Divide 70 

Chapter  IX.— High- water    80 

Chapter  X.— Shuffling  It  Off 87 

Chapter  XL— Sink  or  Swim? 99 

Chapter  XII.— The  Plan  in  Execution 107 

Chapter  XIII.— What  Success?  115 

Chapter  XIV.— Live   or   Die? 124 

Chapter  XV.— The  Plan  Extends  Itself 133 

Chapter  XVI. — From  Information  Received 139 

Chapter  XVII.— Breaking  a  Heart 145 

Chapter  XVIII.— Complications   154 

Chapter  XIX. — Au  Rendezvous  des  Bons  Camarades 166 

Chapter  XX.— Events  March 176 

Chapter  XXL— Clearing  the  Decks 184 

Chapter  XXII.— Holy  Matrimony   194 

Chapter  XXIII.— Under  the  Palm-trees 201 

Chapter  XXIV.— The  Balance  Quivers 211 

Chapter  XXV. — Clouds  on  the  Horizon 218 

Chapter  XXVI. — Reporting  Progress  228 

Chapter  XXVII.— Art  at  Home. . . . : 235 

Chapter  XXVIII.— Rehearsal    245 

Chapter  XXIX.— Accidents  Will  Happen 254 

Chapter  XXX. — Thfe  Bard  in  Harness* - 263 

Chapter  XXXL— Coming  Round  2Y 

Chapter  XXXII.— On  Trial   27V 

Chapter  XXXIII.— An  Artistic  Event 2fc 

Chapter  XXXIV.— The  Strands  Draw  Closer 303 

Chapter  XXXV.— Retribution  310 


Page 

Chapter  XXXVI.— The  Other  Side  of  the  Shield 322 

Chapter  XXXVII.— Proving  His  Case 329 

Chapter  XXXVIII.— Ghost  or  Woman? 337 

Chapter  XXXIX.— After  Long  Grief  and  Pain 344 

Chapter  XL.— At  Rest  at  Last 353 

Chapter  XLL— Rediviva!   358 

Chapter  XLII.— Face  to  Face 36S- 

Chapter  XLIII.— At  Monte  Carlo 377 

Chapter  XLIV. — "Ladies    and    Gentlemen,    Make    Your 

Game!"  385 

Chapter  XLV.— Pactolus  Indeed! 394 

Chapter  XLVL— The  Turn  of  the  Tide 400 

Chapter  XLVII.— Fortune  of  War 408 

Chapter  XLVIII.— At  Bay   415 

Chapter  XLIX.— The  Unforeseen 422 

Chapter  L.— The  Cap  Martin  Catastrophe 428 

Chapter  LI.— Next  of  Kin  Wanted 434 

Chapter  LII.— The  Tangle  Resolves  Itself 441 


THIS  MORTAL  COIL 


CHAPTER  I. 

BOHEMIA. 

Whoever  knows  Bohemian  London,  knows  the  smoking- 
room  of  the  Cheyne  Row  Club.  No  more  comfortable  or 
congenial  divan  exists  anywhere  between  Regent  Circus 
and  Hyde  Park  Corner  than  that  chosen  paradise  of  unrec- 
ognized genius.  The  Cheyne  Row  Club  is  not  large, 
indeed,  but  it  prides  itself  upon  being  extremely  select — 
too  select  to  admit  upon  its  list  of  members  peers,  politi- 
cians, country  gentlemen,  or  inhabitants  of  eligible  family 
residences  in  Mayfair  or  Belgravia.  Two  qualifications 
are  understood  to  be  indispensable  in  candidates  for  mem- 
bership: they  must  be  truly  great,  and  they  must  be 
unsuccessful.  Possession  of  a  commodious  suburban 
villa  excludes  ipso  facto.  The  Club  is  emphatically  the 
headquarters  of  the  great  Bohemian  clan:  the  gathering- 
place  of  unhung  artists,  unread  novelists,  unpaid  poets, 
and  unheeded  social  and  political  reformers  generally. 
Hither  flock  all  the  choicest  spirits  of  the  age  during  that 
probationary  period  when  society,  in  its  slow  and  lumber- 
ing fashion,  is  spending  twenty  years  in  discovering  for 
itself  the  bare  fact  of  their  distinguished  existence.  Here 
Maudle  displays  his  latest  designs  to  Postlethwaite's 
critical  and  admiring  eye;  here  Postlethwaite  pours  his 
honeyed  sonnets  into  Maudle's  receptive  and  sympathetic 
tympanum.  Everybody  who  is  anybody  has  once  been 
a  member  of  the  "dear  old  Cheyne  Row:"  Royal  Aca- 
demicians and  Cabinet  Ministers  and  Society  Journalists 
and  successful  poets  still  speak  with  lingering  pride  and 
affection  of  the  days  when  they  lunched  there,  as  yet 
undiscovered,  on  a  single  chop  and  a  glass  of  draught 
claret  by  no  means  of  the  daintiest. 


2  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

Not  that  the  Club  can  number  any  of  them  now  on  its 
existing  roll-call:  the  Cheyne  Row  is  for  prospective 
celebrity  only;  accomplished  facts  transfer  themselves  at 
once  to  a  statelier  site  in  Pall  Mall  near  the  Duke  of  York's 
Column.  Rising  merit  frequents  the  Tavern,  as  scoffers 
profanely  term  it:  risen  greatness  basks  en  the  lordly 
stuffed  couches  of  Waterloo  Place.  No  matt,  it  has  been 
acutely  observed,  remains  a  Bohemian  when  he  has 
daughters  to  marry.  The  pure  and  blameless  ratepayer 
avoids  Prague.  As  soon  as  Smith  becomes  Chancellor 
of  the  Exchequer,  as  soon  as  Brown  takes  silk,  as  soon  as 
Robinson  is  elected  an  Associate,  as  soon  as  Tompkins 
publishes  his  popular  novel,  they  all  incontinently  with 
one  accord  desert  the  lesser  institution  in  the  Piccadilly 
byway,  and  pass  on  their  names,  their  honors,  their  hats, 
and  their  subscriptions  to  the  dignified  repose  of  the 
Athenaeum.  For  them,  the  favorite  haunt  of  judge  and 
bishop:  for  the  young,  the  active,  the  struggling,  and  the 
incipient,  the  chop  and  claret  of  the  less  distinguished 
but  more  lively  caravanserai  by  the  Green  Park  purlieus. 

In  the  smoking-room  of  this  eminent  and  unsuccessful 
Bohemian  society,  at  the  tag-end  of  a  London  season, 
one  warm  evening  in  a  hot  July,  Hugh  Massinger,  of  the 
Utter  Bar,  sat  lazily  by  the  big  bow  window,  turning 
over  the  pages  of  the  last  number  of  the  "Charing  Cross 
Review." 

That  he  was  truly  great,  nobody  could  deny.    He  was 

in  very  fact  a  divine  bard,  or,  to  be  more  strictly  accurate, 

the  author  of  a  pleasing  and  melodious  volume  of  minor 

poetry.    Even  away  from  the  Cheyne  Row  Club,  none 

but  the  most  remote  of  country-cousins—say  from  the 

vilder  parts  of  Cornwall  or  the  crofter-clad  recesses  of 

the  Isle  of  Skye— could  have  doubted  for  a  moment  the 

patent  fact  that  Hugh   Massinger  was  a  distinguished 

(though  unknown)  poet  of  the  antique  school,  so  admir- 

bly  did  he  fit  his  part  in  life  as  to  features,  dress    and 

neral  appearance  Indeed,  malicious  persons  were 
times  unkindly  to  insinuate  that  Hugh  was  a  poet, 
because  he  found  in  himself  any  special  aptitude  for 
LTif5  ?I"  buildinS.the  'of*  rhyme,  but  because 
and  bearing  imperatively  compelled  him  to  adopt 


BOHEMIA.  3 

the  thankless  profession  of  bard  in  self-justification  and 
self-defense.  This  was  ill-natured,  and  it  was  also  untrue ; 
for  Hugh  Massinger  had  lisped  in  numbers — at  least  iu 
penny  ones — ever  since  he  v.-as  able  to  lisp  in  print  at  all. 
Elizabethan  or  nothing,  he  had  taken  to  poetry  almost 
from  his  very  cradle;  and  had  astonished  his  father  at 
sixteen  by  a  rhymed  version  of  an  ode  of  Horace,  worthy 
the  inspiration  of  the  great  Dr.  Watts  himself,  and  not, 
perhaps,  far  below  the  poetic  standard  of  Mr.  Martin 
Farquhar  Tupper.  At  Oxford  he  had  perpetrated  a  cap- 
ital Xewdigate ;  and  two  years  after  gaining  his  fellowship 
at  Oriel,  he  had  published  anonymously,  in  parchment 
covers,  "Echoes  from  Callimachus,  and  other  Poems" — 
in  the  style  of  the  early  romantic  school — which  had  fairly 
succeeded  by  careful  nursing  in  attaining  the  dignity  of 
a  second  edition  under  his  own  name.  So  that  Massin- 
ger's  claim  to  the  sodality  of  the  craft  whose  workmen  are 
"born  not  made"  might  perhaps  be  considered  as  of  the 
genuine  order,  and  not  entirely  dependent,  as  cynics 
averred,  upon  his  long  hair,  his  pensive  eyes,  his  dark- 
brown  cheek,  or  the  careless  twist  of  his  necktie  and  his 
shirt-collar. 

Nevertheless,  even  in  these  minor  details  of  the  poetical 
character,  it  must  candidly  be  confessed  that  Hugh  Mas- 
singer  outstripped  by  several  points  many  of  the  more 
recognized  bards  whose  popular  works  are  published  in 
regulation  green-cloth  octavos,  and  whose  hats  and  cloaks, 
of  unique  build,  adorn  with  their  presence  the  vestibule 
pegs  of  the  Athenaeum  itself.  He  went  back  to  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  youth  of  our  century.  The  undistinguished 
author  of  "Echoes  from  Callimachus"  was  tall  and  pale, 
and  a  trifle  Byronic.  That  his  face  was  beautiful,  extremely 
beautiful,  even  a  hostile  reviewer  in  the  organ  of  another 
clique  could  hardly  venture  seriously  to  deny:  those  large 
gray  eyes,  that  long  black  hair,  that  exquisitely  chiseled 
and  delicate  mouth,  would  alone  have  sufficed  to  attract 
attention  and  extort  admiration  anywhere  in  the  universe, 
or  at  the  very  least  in  the  solar  system. 

Hugh  Massinger,  in  short,  was  (like  Coleridge)  a  notice- 
able man.  It  would  have  been  impossible  to  pass  him  by, 
even  in  a  crowded  street,  without  a  hurried  glance  of 


4  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

observation  and  pleasure  at  his  singularly  graceful  and 
noble  face.  He  looked  and  moved  every  inch  a  poet; 
delicate,  refined,  cultivated,  expressive,  and  sicklied  o'er 
with  that  pale  cast  of  thought  which  modern  aestheticism 
so  cruelly  demands  as  a  proof  of  attachment  from  her 
highest  votaries.  Yet  at  the  same  time,  in  spite  of  decep- 
tive appearances  to  the  contrary,  he  was  strong  in  muscular 
strength:  a  wiry  man,  thin,  but  well  knit:  one  of  those 
fallacious,  uncanny,  long-limbed  creatures,  who  can  scale 
an  Alp  or  tramp  a  score  or  so  of  miles  before  breakfast, 
while  looking  as  if  a  short  stroll  through  the  Park  would 
kill  them  outright  with  sheer  exhaustion.  Altogether,  a 
typical  poet  of  the  old-fashioned  school,  that -dark  and 
handsome  Italianesque  man:  and  as  he  sat  there  care- 
lessly, with  the  paper  held  before  him,  in  an  unstudied  atti- 
tude of  natural  grace,  many  a  painter  might  have  done 
worse  than  choose  the  author  of  "Echoes  from  Calli- 
machus"  for  the  subject  of  a  pretty  Academy  pot-boiler. 

So  Warren  Relf,  the  unknown  marine  artist,  thought 
to  himself  in  his  armchair  opposite,  as  he  raised  his  eyes 
by  chance  from  the  etchings  in  the  "Portfolio,''  and 
glanced  across  casually  with  a  hasty  look  at  the  undis- 
covered poet. 

'Has  the  'Charing  Cross'  reviewed  your  new  volume 
yet?"  he  asked  politely,  his  glance  meeting  Massinger's 
while  he  flung  down  the  paper  on  the  table  beside  him. 

The  poet  rose  and  stood  with  his  hands  behind  his 
back  in  an  easy  posture  before  the  empty  fireplace.  "I 
believe  it  has  deigned  to  assign  me  half  a  column  of  judi- 
cious abuse,"  he  answered,  half  yawning,  with  an  assump- 
tion of  profound  indifference"  and  contempt  for  the 
Charing  Cross  Review"  and  all  its  ideas  or  opinions 
collectively.  "To  tell  you  the  truth,  the  subject's  one  that 
doesn't  interest  me.  In  the  first  place,  I  care  very  little 
for  my  own  verses.  And  in  the  second  place,  I  don't  care 
at  all  for  reviewers  generally,  or  for  the  'Charing  Cross 
Snarler  and  its  kind  in  particular.  I  disbelieve  altogether 
n  reviews,  in  fact.  Familiarity  breeds  contempt.  To  be 
quite  candid,  I've  written  too  many  of  them." 

f  criticism  in  literature's  like 'criticism  in  art,"  the 
young  painter  rejoined,  smiling,  "why,  with  the  one  usual 


BOHEMIA.  5 

polite  exception  of  yourself,  Massinger,  I  can't  say  1  think 
very  much  of  the  critics. — But  what  do  you  mean,  I  should 
like  to  know,  by  saying  you  don't  care  for 'your  own 
verses?  Surely  no  man  can  do  anything  great,  in  literature 
or  art — or  in  shoe-blacking  or  pig-sticking,  if  it  comes  to 
that — unless  he  thoroughly  believes  in  his  own  vocation." 

Massinger  laughed  a  musical  laugh.  "In  shoe-blacking 
or  pig-sticking,*'  he  said,  with  a  delicate  curl  of  his  thin 
lip?,  "that's  no  doubt  true;  but  in  verse-making,  query? 
Who  on  earth  at  the  present  day  could  even  pretend  to 
himself  to  believe  in  poetry?  Time  was,  I  dare  say — 
though  Fm  by  no  means  sure  of  it — when  the  bard,  hoary 
old  impostor,  was  a  sort  of  prophet,  and  went  about  the 
world  with  a  harp  in  his  hand,  and  a  profound  conviction 
in  his  innocent  old  heart  that  when  he  made  'Sapphic' 
rhyme  to  'traffic,'  or  produced  a  sonnet  on  the  theme  of 
'Catullus,'  'lull  us,"  and  'cull  us,'  he  was  really  and  truly 
enriching  humanity  with  a  noble  gift  of  divine  poesy.  If 
the  amiable  old  humbug  could  actually  bring  himself  to 
believe  in  his  soul  that  stringing  together  fourteen  lines 
into  an  indifferent  piece,  or  balancing  'mighty'  to  chime 
with  'Aphrodite,'  in  best  Swinburnian  style,  was  fulfilling 
his  appointed  function  in  the  scheme  of  the  universe,  I'm 
sure  I  should  be  the  last  to  interfere  with  the  agreeable 
delusion  under  which  (like  the  gentlemen  from  Argos  in 
Horace)  he  must  have  been  laboring.  It's  so  delightful 
to  believe  in  anything,  that  for  my  own  part,  I  wouldn't 
attempt  to  insinuate  doubts  into  the  mind  of  a  contented 
Buddhist  or  a  devout  worshiper  of  Mumbo  Jumbo." 

"But  surely  you  look  upon  yourself  as  a  reaction  against 
this  modern  school  of  Swinburnians  and  ballad-mongers, 
don't  you?"  Relf  said,  with  a  shrug. 

"Of  course  I  do.  Byron's  my  man.  I  go  back  to  the 
original  inspiration  of  the  romantic  school.  It's  simpler, 
and  it's  easier.  But  what  of  that?  Our  method's  all  the 
same  at  bottom,  after  all.  Who  in  London  in  this  nine- 
teenth century  can  for  a  moment  affect  to  believe  in  the 
efficacy  of  poetry?  Look  at  this  last  new  volume  of  my 
own,  for  example! — You  won't  look  at  it,  of  course,  I'm 
well  aware,  but  that's  no  matter :  nobody  ever  does  look  at 
my  immortal  works,  I'm  only  too  profoundly  conscious. 


6  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

I  cut  them  myself  in  a  dusty  copy  at  all  the  libraries,  in 
order  to  create  a  delusive  impression  on  the  mind  of  the 
public  that  I've  had  at  least  a  solitary  reader.  But  let 
that  pass.  Look,  metaphorically,  I  mean,  and  not  liter- 
ally, at  this  last  new  volume  of  mine!  How  do  you  think 
a  divine  bard  does  it?  Simply  by  taking  a  series  of  rhymes 
—'able/  and  'stable/  and  'table/  and  'cable;'  'Mabel/  and 
'Babel/  and  'fable/  and  'gable'— and  weaving  them  all 
together  cunningly  by  a  set  form  into  a  Procrustean  mold 
to  make  up  a  poem.  '  Perhaps  'gable/  which  you've  men- 
tally fixed  upon  for  the  fourth  line,  won't  suit  the  sense. 
Very  well,  then;  you  must  do  your  best  to  twist  some- 
thing reasonable,  or  at  least  inoffensive,  out  of  'sable'  or 
'label/  or  'Cain  and  Abel/  or  anything  else  that  will  make 
up  the  rhmye  and  complete  the  meter." 

"And  that  is  your  plan,  Massinger?" 

"Yes,  all  this'  last  lot  of  mine  are  done  like  that:  just 
bouts  rimes — I  admit  the  fact;  for  what's  all  poetry  but 
bouts  rimes  in  the  highest  perfection?  Mechanical, 
mechanical.  I  draw  up  a  lot  of  lists  of  rhymes  beforehand : 
'kirtle/  and  'myrtle/  and  'hurtle/  and  'turtle'  (those  are  all 
original);  'paean/  'Aegan/  'plebeian/  and  'Tean'  (those 
are  fairly  new) ;  'battle/  and  'cattle/  and  'prattle/  and  'rat- 
tle' (those  are  all  commonplace);  and  then,  when  the 
divine  afflatus  seizes  me,  I  take  out  the  -lists  and  con  them 
over,  and  weave  them  up  into  an  undying  song  for  future 
generations  to  go  wild  about  and  comment  upon.  'What 
profound  thought/  my  unborn  Malones  and  Furnivalls 
and  Leos  will  ask  confidingly  in  their  learned  editions, 
'did  the  immortal  bard  mean  to  convey  by  this  obscure 
couplet?' — I'll  tell  you  in  confidence.  He  meant  to  con- 
vey the  abstruse  idea  that  'passenger'  was  the  only  English 
word  he  could  find  in  the  dictionary  at  all  like  a  rhyme  lo 
the  name  of  'Massinger/  " 

Warren  Relf  looked  up  at  him  a  little  uneasily.  "I  don't 
like  to  hear  you  run  down  poetry  like  that,"  he  said,  with 
an  evident  tinge  of  disapprobation.  "I'm  not  a  poet 
myself,  of  course;  but  still  I'm  sure  it  isn't  all  a  mere 
matter  of  rhymes  and  refrains,  of  epithets  and  prettinesses. 
\Vhat  touches  our  hearts  lies  deeper  than  mere  expres- 
sion, I'm  certain.  It  lies  in  the  very  core  and  fiber  of  the 


BOHEMIA  7 

man.  There  are  passages  even  in  your  own  poems — 
though  you're  a  great  deal  too  cynical  to  admit  it  now — 
that  came  straight  out  of  the  depths  of  your  own  heart, 
I  venture  to  conjecture — those  'Lines  on  a  Lock  of  Hair/ 
for  example. — Aha,  cynic!  there  I  touched  you  on  the 
raw. — But  if  you  think  so  lightly  of  poetry  as  a  pursuit, 
as  you  say,  I  wonder  why  you  ever  came  to  take  to  it." 

"Take  to  it,  my  dear  fellow!  What  an  Arcadian  idea! 
As  if  men  nowadays  chose  their  sphere  in  life  deliberately. 
Why,  what  on  earth  makes  any  of  us  ever  take  to  anything, 
I  should  like  to  know,  in  this  miserable  workaday  modern 
world  of  ours?  Because  we're  simply  pitchforked  into  it 
by  circumstances.  Does  the  crossing-sweeper  sweep 
crossings,  do  you  suppose,  for  example,  by  pure  prefer- 
ence for  the  profession  of  a  sweep?  Does  the  milkman 
get  up  at  five  in  the  morning  because  he  sees  in  the  pur- 
veying of  skim-milk  to  babes  and  sucklings  a  useful, 
important,  and  even  necessary  industry  to  the  rising  gen- 
eration of  this  great  Metropolis?  Does  the  dustman  empty 
the  domestic  bin  out  of  disinterested  regard  for  public 
sanitation?  or  the  engine-driver  dash  through  rain  and 
snow  in  a  drear-nighted  December  like  a  Comtist  prophet, 
out  of  high  and  noble  enthusiasm  of  humanity?"  He 
snapped  his  fingers  with  an  emphatic  negative. — "We  don't 
choose  our  places  in  life  at  all,  my  dear  boy,"  he  went  on 
after  a  pause:  "we  get  tumbled  into  them  by  pure  caprice 
of  circumstances.  If  I'd  chosen  mine,  instead  of  strictly 
meditating  the  thankless  Muse,  I'd  certainly  have  adopted 
the  exalted  profession  of  a  landed  proprietor,  with  the 
pleasing  duty  of  receiving  my  rents  (by  proxy)  once  every 
quarter,  and  spending  them  royally  with  becoming  mag- 
nificence, in  noble  ways,  like  the  Greek  gentleman  one 
reads  about  in  Aristotle.  I  always  admired  that  amiable 
Greek  gentleman — the  '  megaloprepcs,  I  think  Aristotle 
calls  him.  His  berth  would  suit  me  down  to  the  ground. 
He  had  nothing  at  all  of  any  sort  to  do,  and  he  did  it  most 
gracefully  with  princely  generosity  on  a  sufficient  income." 

"But  you  must  write  poetry  for  something  or  other, 
Massinger;  for  if  it  isn't  rude  to  make  the  suggestion,  you 
can  hardly  write  it,  you  know,  for  a  livelihood." 

Massinger's  dark   face   flushed  visibly.     "I   write  for 


g  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

fame,"  he  answered  majestically,  with  a  lordly  wave  of  his 
long  thin  hand.  "For  glory — for  honor — for  time — for 
eternity.  Or,  to  be  more  precisely  definite,  if  you  prefer 
the  phrase,  for  filthy  lucre.  In  the  coarse  and  crude 
phraseology  of  political  economists,  poetry  takes  rank 
nowadays,  I  humbly  perceive,  as  a  long  investment.  I'm 
a  journalist  by  trade — a  mere  journeyman  journalist;  the 
gushing  penny-a-liner  of  a  futile  and  demoralized  London 
press.  But  I  have  a  soul  within  me  above  penny-a-lining; 
I  aspire  ultimately  to  a  pound  a  word.  I  don't  mean  to 
live  and  die  in  Grub  Street.  My  soul  looks  forward  to 
immortality,  and  a  footman  in  livery.  Xow,  when  once  a 
man  has  got  pitchforked  by  fate  into  the  rank  and  file  of 
contemporary  journalism,  there  are  only  two  ways  pos- 
sible for  him  to  extricate  himself  with  peace  and  honor 
from  his  unfortunate  position.  One  way  is  to  write  a  suc- 
cessful novel.  That's  the  easiest,  quickest,  and  most 
immediate  short-cut  from  Grub  Street  to  Eaton  Place  and 
affluence  that  I  know  of  anywhere.  But  unhappily  it's 
crowded,  immensely  overcrowded — vehicular  traffic  for 
the  present  entirely  suspended.  Therefore,  the  only  pos- 
sible alternative  is  to  take  up  poetry.  The  Muse  must 
descend  to  feel  the  pulse  of  the  market.  I'm  conscious  of 
the  soul  of  song  within  me;  that  is  to  say,  I  can  put 
'Myrrha'  to  rhyme  with  'Pyrrha,'  and  alliterate  ps  and  qs 
and  ws  with  any  man  living  (bar  Algernon)  in  all  England. 
Now,  poetry's  a  very  long  road  round,  I  admit — like 
going  from  Kensington  to  the  City  by  Willesden  Junc- 
tion; but  in  the  end,  if  properly  worked,  it  lands  you  at 
last  by  a  circuitous  route  in  fame  and  respectability.  To 
be  Poet  Laureate  is  eminently  respectable.  A  rnl-.n  can 
live  on  journalism  meanwhile;  but  if  he  keep.3  pegging 
away  at  his  Pegasus  in  his  spare  moments,  without  inter- 
mission, like  a  costermonger  at  his'  donkey,  Pegasus  will 
raise  himself  after  many  days  to  the  top  of  Parnassus, 
where  he  can  build  himself  a  commodious  family  resi- 
dence, lighted  throughout  with  electric  lights,  and  com- 
manding a  magnificent  view  in  every  direction  over  the 
Yale  of  Tempe  and  the  surrounding  country.  Tennyson's 
done  it  already  at  Aid  worth;  why  shouldn't  I.  too,  do  it 
in  time  on  Parnassus?" 


BOHEMIA.  9 

Relf  smiled  dubiously,  and  knocked  the  ashes  off  his 
cigar  into  a  Japanese  tray  that  stood  by  his  side.  "Then 
you  look  upon  poetry  merely  as  an  ultimate  means  of 
making  money?"  he  suggested,  with  a  deprecatory  look. 

"Money!  Not  money  only,  my  dear  fellow,  but  posi- 
tion, reputation,  recognition,  honor.  Does  any  man 
work  for  anything  else?  Any  man,  I  mean,  but  cobblers 
and  enthusiasts?" 

"Well,  I  don't  know.  I  may  be  an  enthusiast  myself," 
Relf  answered  slowly;  "but  I  certainly  do  work  at  art  to  a 
great  extent  for  art's  sake,  because  I  really  love  and  admire 
and  delight  in  it.  Of  course  I  should  like  to  make  money 
too,  within  reasonable  limits — enough  to  keep  myself  and 
my  people  in  a  modest  sort  of  way,  without  the  footman 
or  the  eligible  family  residence.  Not  that  I  want  to  be 
successful,  either:  from  what  I've  seen  of  successful  men, 
I  incline  to  believe  that  success  as  a  rule  has  a  very  degen- 
erating effect  upon  character.  Literature,  science,  and  art 
thrive  best  in  a  breezy,  bracing  air.  I  never  aim  at  being 
a  successful  man  myself;  and!  if  I  go  on  as  I'm  doing  now, 
I  shall  no  doubt  succeed  in  not  succeeding.  But  apart 
from  the  money  and  the  livelihood  altogether,  I  love  my 
work  as  an  occupation.  I  like  doing  it;  and  I  like  to  see 
myself  growing  stronger  and  freer  at  it  every  day." 

"That's  all  very  well  for  you,"  Massinger  replied,  with 
another  expansive  wave  of  his  graceful  hand.  "You're 
doing  work  you  care  for,  as  I  play  lawn-tennis,  for  a  per- 
sonal amusement.  I  can  sympathize  with  you  there.  I 
once  felt  the  same  about  poetry  myself.  But  that  wras  a 
long  time  ago:  those  days  are  dead — hopelessly  dead,  as 
dead  as  Mad  Margaret's  affidavit.  I'm  a  skeptic  now: 
my  faith  in  verse  has  evaporated  utterly.  Have  I  not 
seen  the  public  devour  ten  successive  editions  of  the  'Epic 
of  Washerwomen,'  or  something  of  the  sort?  Have  I  not 
seen  them  reject  the  good  and  cleave  unto  the  evil,  like  the 
children  of  Israel  wandering  in  the  Wilderness?  I  know 
now  that  the  world  is  hollow,  and  that  my  doll  is  stuffed 
with  sawdust. — Let's  quit  the  subject.  It  turns  me  always 
into  a  gloomy  pessimist. — What  are  you  going  to  do  with 
yourself  this  summer?" 

"Me?     Oh,  just  the  usual  thing,  I  suppose.     Going 


10  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

down  in  my  tub  to  paint  sweet  mudbanks  off  the  coast  of. 
Suffolk." 

"Suffolk  to  wit!  I  see  the  finger  of  fate  in  that!  Why, 
that's  where  I'm  going  too.  I  mean  to  take  six  or  eight 
weeks'  holiday,  if  a  poor  drudge  of  a  journalist  can  ever 
be  said  to  indulge  in  holidays  at  all — with  books  for 
review,  and  proofs  for  correction,  and  editorial  communi- 
cations for  consideration,  always  weighing  like  a  ton  of 
lead  upon  this  unhappy  breast:  and  I  promise  to  bury 
myself  alive  up  to  the  chin  in  some  obscure,  out-of-the- 
way  Suffolk  village  they  call  Whitestrand. — Have  you  ever 
heard  of  it?" 

"Oh,  I  know  it  well,"  Relf  answered,  with  a  smile  of 
delightful  reminiscence.  ''It's  grand  for  mud.  I  go  there 
painting  again  and  again.  You'd  call  it  the  funniest 
little  stranded  old-world  village  you  ever  came  across 
anywhere  in  England.  Nothing  could  be  uglier,  quainter, 
or  more  perfectly  charming.  It  lies  at  the  mouth  of  a 
dear  little  muddy  creek,  with  a  funny  old  mill  for  pumping 
the  water  off  the  sunken  meadows;  and  all  around  for 
miles  and  miles  is  one  great  flat  of  sedge  and  seapink, 
alive  with  water-birds  and  intersected  with  dikes,  where 
the  herons  fish  all  day  long,  poised  on  one  leg  in  the 
middle  of  the  stream  as  still  as  mice,  exactly  as  if  they  were 
sitting  to  Marks  for  their  portraits." 

"Ah,  delightful  for  a  painter,  I've  no  doubt,"  Hugh 
Massinger  replied,  half  yawning  to  himself,  "especially 
for  a  painter  to  whom  mud  and  herons  are  bread  and 
butter,  and  brackish  water  is  Eiass  and  Allsopp;  but  scarce- 
ly, you'll  admit,  an  attractive  picture  to  the  inartistic  pub- 
lic, among  whom  I  take  the  liberty,  for  this  occasion  only, 
humbly  to  rank  myself.  I  go  there,  in  fact,  as  a  martyr 
to  principle.  I  live  for  others.  A  member  of  my  family- - 
not  to  put  too  fine  a  point  upon  it,  a  lady— abides  for  the 
present  moment  at  Whitestrand,  and  believes  herself  to 
be  seized  or  possessed  by  prescriptive  right  of  a  lien  or 
claim  to  a  certain  fixed  aliquot  portion  of  my  time  and 
attention.  I've  never  admitted  the  claim  myself  (being  a 
legally  minded  soul) ;  but  just  out  of  the  natural  sweetness 
)f  my  disposition,  I  go  down  occasionally  (without  preju- 
dice) to  whatever  part  of  England  she  may  chance  to  be 


BOHEMIA.  11 

inhabiting,  for  the  sake  of  not  disappointing  her  foregone 
expectations,  however  ill-founded,  and  be  the  same  more 
or  less. — You  observe,  I  speak  with  the  charming  preci- 
sion of  the  English  statute-book." 

"But  how  do  you  mean  to  get  to  Whitestrand  ?"  Relf 
asked  suddenly,  after  a  short  pause.  "It's  a  difficult  place 
to  reach,  you  know.  There's  no  station  nearer  than  ten 
miles  off,  and  that  a  country  one,  so  that  when  you  arrive 
there,  you  can  get  no  conveyance  to  take  you  over." 

"So  my  cousin  gave  me  to  understand.  She  \vas  kind 
enough  to  provide  me  with  minute  instructions  for  her 
bookless  wilds.  I  believe  I'm  to  hire  a  costermonger's 
cart  or  something  of  the  sort  to  convey  my  portmanteau ; 
and  I'm  to  get  across  myself  by  the  aid  of  the  natural 
means  of  locomotion  with  which  a  generous  providence 
or  survival  of  the  fittest  has  been  good  enough  to  endow 
me  by  hereditary  transmission.  At  least,  so  my  cousin 
Elsie  instructs  me." 

"\Yhv  not  come  round  with  me  in  the  tub?"  Relf  sug- 
gested good-humoredly. 

"What?  your  yacht?  Hatherley  was  telling  me  you 
were  the  proud  possessor  of  a  ship. — Are  you  going  round 
that  way  any  time  shortly  ?" 

"\Yell,  she's  not  exactly  what  you  call  a  yacht,"  Relf 
replied,  with  an  apologetic  tinge  in  his  tone  of  voice. 
"She's  only  a  tub,  you  know,  an  open  boat  almost,  with  a 
covered  well  and  just  room  for  three  to  sleep  and 
feed  in.  'A  poor  thing,  but  my  own/  as  Touchstone  says; 
as  broad  as  she's  long,  and  as  shallow  as  she's  broad,  and 
quite  flat-bottomed,  drawing  so  little  water  at  a  pinch  that 
you  can  sail  her  across  an  open  meadow  when  there's  a 
heavy  dew  on. — And  if  you  come,  you'll  have  to  work  your 
passage,  of  course.  I  navigate  her  myself,  as  captain,  crew, 
cabin-boy,  and  passenger,  with  one  other  painter  fellow 
to  share  watches  with  me.  The  fact  is,  I  got  her  built  as 
a  substitute  for  rooms,  because  I  found  it  cheaper  than 
taking  lodgings  at  a  seaside  place  and  hiring  a  rowboat 
whenever  one  wanted  one.  I  cruise  about  the  English 
coast  with  her  in  summer;  and  in  the  cold  months,  I  run 
her  round  to  the  Mediterranean.  And,  besides,  one  can 
get  into  such  lovely  little  side-creeks  and  neglected  chan- 


12  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

nels,  all  full  of  curious  objects  of  interest,  which  nobody 
can  ever  see  in  anything  else.  She's  a  perfect  treasure  to 
a  marine  painter  in  the  mud-and-buoy  business.  But  I 
won't  for  a  moment  pretend  to  say  she's  comfortable  for 
a  landsman.  If  you  come  with  me,  in  fact,  you'll  have  to 
rough  it." 

"I  love  roughing  it. — How  long1  will  it  take  us  to  cruise 
round  to  Whitestrand?" 

"Oh,  the  voyage  depends  entirely  upon  the  wind  and 
tide.  Sailing-boats  take  their  own  time.  The  'Mud- 
Turtle' — that's  what  I  call  her — doesn't  hurry.  She's 
lying  now  off  the  Pool  at  the  Tower,  taking  care  of  her- 
self in  the  absence  of  all  her  regular  crew;  and  Potts,  my 
mate,  he's  away  in  the  north,  intending  to  meet  me  next 
week  at  Lowestoft,  where  my  mother  and  sister  are  stop- 
ping in  lodgings.  We  can  start  on  our  cruise  whenever 
you  like — say,  if  you  choose,  to-morrow  morning." 

'Thanks,  awfully,"  Hugh  answered,  with  a  nod  of 
assent  "To  tell  you  the  truth,  I  should  like  nothing  better. 
It'll  be  an  experience,  and  the  wise  man  lives  upon  new 
experiences.  Pallas,  you  remember,  in  Tennyson's 
'Oenone,'  recommended  to  Paris  the  deliberate  cultiva- 
tion of  experiences  as  such. — I'll  certainly  go.  For  my 
o\yn  part,  like  Saint  Simon,  I  mean  in  my  time  to  have 
tried  everything.  Though  Saint  Simon,  to  be  sure,  went 
rather  far,  for  I  believe  he  even  took  a  turn  for  a  while 
at  picking  pockets." 


CHAPTER  II. 
DOWN  STREAM. 

Tide  served  next  morning  at  eleven ;  and  punctual  to  the 
minute— for,  besides  being  a  poet,  he  prided  himself  on  his 
qualities  as  a  man  of  business— Hugh  Massinger  sur- 
rendered himself  in  due  course  by  previous  appointment 
on  board  the  "Mud-Turtle"  at  the  Pool  by  the  Tower 
But  his  eyes  were  heavier  and  redder  than  they  had  seemed 


DOWN  STREAM.  13 

last  night;  and  his  wearied  manner  showed  at  once,  by  a 
hundred  little  signs,  that  he  had  devoted  but  small  time 
since  Relf  left  him  to  what  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  peri- 
phrastically  describes  as  "reparative  processes." 

The  painter,  attired  for  the  sea  like  a  common  sailor  in 
jersey  and  trousers  and  knitted  woolen  cap,  rose  up  from 
the  deck  to  greet  him  hospitably.  His  whole  appearance 
betokened  serious  business.  It  was  evident  that  Warren 
Relf  did  not  mean  to  play  at  yachting. 

"You've  been  making  a  night  of  it,  I'm  afraid,  Mas- 
singer,"  he  said,  as  their  eyes  met.  "Bad  preparation,  you 
know,  for  a  day  down  the  river.  We  shall  have  a  loppy 
sea,  if  this  wind  holds,  when  we  pass  the  Nore.  You 
ought  to  have  gone  straight  to  bed  when  you  left  the  club 
with  me  fast  evening." 

"I  know  I  ought,"  the  poet  responded  with  affected 
cheerfulness.  "The  path  of  duty's  as  plain  as  a  pikestaff. 
But  the  things  I  ought  to  do  I  mostly  leave  undone;  and 
the  things  I  ought  not  to  do  I  find,  on  the  contrary,  vastly 
attractive.  I  may  as  well  make  a  clean  breast  of  it.  I 
strolled  round  to  Pallavicini's  after  you  vacated  the  Row 
last  night,  and  found  them  having  a  turn  or  two  at  lans- 
quenet. Now,  lansquenet's  an  amusement  I  never  can  re- 
sist. The  consequence  was,  in  three  hours  I  was  pretty 
well  cleaned  out  of  ready  cash,  and  shall  have  to  keep  my 
nose  to  the  grindstone  accordingly  all  through  what  ought 
by  rights  to  have  been  my  summer  holiday.  This  conclu- 
sively shows  the  evils  of  high  play,  and  the  moral  supe- 
riority of  the  wise  man  who  goes  home  to  bed  and  is 
sound  asleep  when  the  clock  strikes  eleven." 

Relfs  face  fell  several  tones.  "I  wish,  Massinger,"  he 
said  very  gravely,  "you'd  make  up  your  mind  never  to 
touch  those  hateful  cards  again.  You'll  ruin  your  health, 
your  mind,  and  your  pocket  with  them.  If  you  spent  the 
time  you  spend  upon  play  in  writing  some  really  great 
book  now,  you'd  make  in  the  end  ten  times  as  much  by  it." 

The  poet  smiled  a  calm  smile  of  superior  wisdom. 
"Good  boy!"  he  cried,  patting  Relf  on  the  back  in  mock 
approbation  of  his  moral  advice.  "You  talk  for  all  the 
world  like  a  Sunday-school  prize-book.  Honest  industry 
has  its  due  reward;  while  pitch-and-toss  and  wicked  im- 


14  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

proper  games  land  one  at  last  in  prison  or  the  workhouse. 
The  industrious  apprentice  rises  in  time  to  be  Lord  Mayor 
(and  to  appropriate  the  public  funds  ad  libitum');  whereas, 
the  idle  apprentice,  degraded  by  the  evil  influences  of 
ha'penny  loo,  ends  his  days  with  a  collar  of  hemp  round 
his  naughty  neck  in  an  equally  exalted  but  perhaps  less 
dignified  position  in  life — on  a  platform  at  Newgate.  My 
dear  Relf,  how  on  earth  can  you,  who  are  a  sensible  man, 
believe  all  that  antiquated  nursery  rubbish?  Cast  your 
eyes  for  a  moment  on  the  world  around  you,  here  in  the 
central  hub  of  London,  within  sight  of  all  the  wealth  and 
squalor  of  England,  and  ask  yourself  candidly  whether 
what  you  see  in  it  at  all  corresponds  with  the  idyllic  picture 
of  the  little-Jack-Horner  school  of  moralists.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  is  it  always  the  good  boys  who  pull  the  plums  with 
self-appreciated  smile  out  of  the  world's  pudding?  Far 
from  it:  quite  the  other  way.  I  have  seen  the  wicked 
flourishing  in  my  time  like  a  green  bay-tree.  Honest 
industry  breaks  stones  on  the  road,  while  suc- 
cessful robbery  or  successful  gambling  rolls  by  at  its  ease, 
cigar  in  mouth,  lolling  on  the  cushions  of  its  luxurious 
carriage.  If  you  stick  to  honest  industry  all  your  life 
long,  you  may  go  on  breaking  stones  contentedly  for  the 
whole  term  of  your  natural  existence.  But  if  you  speculate 
boldly  with  your  week's  earnings  and  land  a  haul,  you  may 
set  another  fellow  to  break  stones  for  you  in  time,  and 
then  you  become  at  once  a  respectable  man,  a  capital- 
ist, and  a  baronet.  All  the  great  fortunes  we  see  in  the 
world  have  been  piled  up  in  the  last  resort,  if  you'll  only 
believe  it,  by  successful  gambling." 

Every  man  has  a  right  to  his  own  opinion,"  Warren 
Relf  answered  with  a  more  serious  air,  as  he  turned  aside 
to  look  after  the  rigging.  "I  admit  there's  a  great  deal 

>t  gambling  m  business;  but  anyhow,  honest  industry's 

a  simple  necessary  on  board  the  'Mud-Turtle.'— Come 

'         j  u"11,1  y°U>  from  y°ur  toPsy-turvy  moral  philoso- 

>nv,  and  help  me  out  with  this  sheet  and  the  mainsail. 

ore  we  reach  the  German  Ocean,  you'll  have  the  whole 

of  navigation  at  your  finger's  ends— for  I  mean  to 

i  while  YOU  manage  the  ship— and  be  in  a  position 

3  write  an  ode  m  a  Catalonian  metre  on  the  Pleasures 


DOWN  STREAM.  15 

of  Luffing,  and  the  True  Delight  of  the  Thames  Water- 
way." 

Massinger  turned  to  do  as  he  was  directed,  and  to  in- 
spect the  temporary  floating  hotel  in  which  he  was  to  make 
his  way  contentedly  down  to  the  coast  of  Suffolk.  The 
"Mud-Turtle"  was  indeed  as  odd-looking  and  original 
a  little  craft  as  her  owner  and  skipper  had  proclaimed  her 
to  be.  A  center-board  yawl,  of  seventeen  tons  registered 
burden,  she  ranked  as  a  yacht  only  by  courtesy,  on  the 
general  principle  of  what  the  logicians  call  excluded  mid- 
dle. If  she  wasn't  that,  why,  then,  pray  what  in  the  world 
was  she?  The  "Mud-Turtle"  measured  almost  as  broad 
across  the  beam  as  she  reckoned  -feet  in  length  from  stem 
to  stern ;  and  her  skipper  maintained  with  profound  pride 
that  she  couldn't  capsize  in  the  worst  storm  that  ever 
blew  out  of  an  English  sky,  even  if  she  tried  to.  She 
drew  no  more  than  three  feet  of  water  at  a  pinch;  and 
though  it  was  scarcely  true,  as  Relf  had  averred,  that  a 
heavy  dew  was  sufficient  to  float  her,  she  could  at  least  go 
anywhere  that  a  man  could  wade  up  to  his  knees  without 
fear  of  wetting  his  tucked-up  breeches.  This  made  her  a 
capital  boat  for  a  marine  artist  to  go  about  sketching  in; 
for  Relf  could  lay  her  alongside  a  wreck  on  shallow  sands, 
or  run  her  up  a  narrow  creek  after  picturesque  waterfowl, 
or  approach  the  riskiest  shore  to  the  very  edge  of  the 
cliffs,  without  any  reference  to  the  state  of  the  tide,  or 
the  probable  depth  of  the  surrounding  channel. 

"If  she  grounds,"  the  artist  said  enthusiastically,  expa- 
tiating on  her  merits  to  his  new  passenger,  "you  see  it 
doesn't  really  matter  twopence;  for  the  next  high  tide'll 
set  her  afloat  again  within  six  hours.  She's  a  great  oppor- 
tunist: she  knows  well  that  all  things  come  to  him  who 
can  wait.  The  'Mud-Turtle'  positively  revels  in  mud; 
she  lies  flat  on  it  as  on  her  native,  heath,  and  stays  patiently 
without  one  word  of  reproach  for  the  moon's  attraction 
to  come  in  its  round  to  her  ultimate  rescue." 

The  yawl's  accommodation  was  opportunist  too: 
though  excellent  in  kind,  it  was  limited  in  quantity,  and 
by  no  means  unduly  luxurious  in  quality.  Her  deck  was 
calculated  on  the  most  utilitarian  principles — just  big 
enough  for  two  persons  to  sketch  abreast;  her  cabin 


16  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

contained  three  wooden  bunks,  with  their  appropriate 
complement  of  rugs  and  blankets;  and  a  small  and  prim- 
itive open  stove  devoted  to  the  service  of  the  ship's  cook- 
ery, took  up  almost  all  the  vacant  space  in  the  center  of 
the  well,  leaving  hardly  room  for  the  self-sacrificing  vol- 
unteer who  undertook  the  functions  of  purveyor  and  bot- 
tle-washer to  turn  about  in.  But  the  lockers  were  amply 
stored  with  fresh  bread,  tinned  meats,  and  other  simple 
necessaries  for  a  week's  cruise;  while  food  for  the  mind 
existed  on  a  small  shelf  at  the  stern  in  the  crude  shape  of 
the  "Coaster's  Companion,"  the  Sailing  Directions  issued 
by  Authority  of  the  Honorable  Brethren  of  the  Trinity 
House,  and  the  charts  of  the  Thames,  constructed  from 
the  latest  official  surveys  of  her  Majesty's  Board  of  Ad- 
miralty. Thus  equipped  and  accoutered  Warren  Relf  was 
accustomed  to  live  an  outdoor  life  for  weeks  together 
with  his  one  like-minded  chum  and  Companion;  and  if 
the  spray  was  sometimes  rather  moist,  and  the  yellow  fog 
rather  thick  and  slabby,  and  the  early  mornings  rather 
chill  and  raw,  and  the  German  Ocean  rather  loppy  and 
aggressive  on  the  digestive  faculties,  yet  the  good  dose 
of  fresh  air,  the  delicious  salty  feeling  of  the  free  breeze, 
and  the  perpetual  sense  of  ease  and  lightness  that  comes 
with  yachting,  were  more  than  enough  fully  to  atone  to 
an  enthusiastic  marine  artist  for  all  these  petty  passing 
inconveniences. 

As  for  Hugh  Massinger,  a  confirmed  landsman,  the 
first  few  hours'  sail  down  the  crowded  Thames  appeared 
to  him  at  the  outset  a  perfect  phantasmagoria  of  ever- 
varying  perils  and  assorted  terrors.  He  composed  his  soul 
to  instant  death  from  the  very  beginning.  Not,  indeed, 
that  he  minded  one  bit  for  that:  the  poet  dearly  loved 
danger,  as  he  loved  all  other  forms  of  sensation  and  excite- 
ment: they  were  food  for  the  Muse;  and  the  Muse,  like 
Blanche  Amory,  is  apt  to  exclaim,  "II  me  faut  des  emo- 
But  the  manifold  novel  forms  of  enterprise  as 
the  lumbering  little  yawl  made  her  way  clumsily  among 
the  great  East-Indiamen  and  big  ocean-going  steamers, 
darting  boldly  now  athwart  the  very  bows  of  a  huge 
Monarch-hner,  insinuating  herself  now  with  delicate  pre- 
cision between  the  broadsides  of  two  heavy  Rochestei 


DOWN  Sf  REAM.  17 

barges,  and  just  escaping  collision  now  with  some  laden 
collier  from  Cardiff  or  Newcastle,  were  too  complicated 
and  too  ever-pressing  at  the  first  blush  for  Massinger 
fully  to  take  in  their  meaning  at  a  single  glance. 

The  tidal  Thames  is  the  Cheapside  of  the  ocean,  a  mart 
of  many  nations,  resorting  to  it  by  sea  and  by  land.  It's 
all  very  well  going  down  the  river  on  the  Antwerp  packet 
or  the  outward-bound  Xew-Zealander ;  you  steam  then  at 
your  ease  along  the  broad  unencumbered  central  channel, 
with  serene  confidence  that  a  duly  qualified  pilot  stands  at 
your  helm,  and  that  everybody  else  will  gladly  give  way 
to  you,  for  the  sake  of  saving  their  own  bacon.  But  it's 
quite  another  matter  to  thread  your  way  tortuously  through 
that  thronged  and  bustling  highway  of  the  shipping  inter- 
est in  a  center-board  yawl  of  seventeen  tons  registered  bur- 
den, manned  by  a  single  marine  artist  and  an  amateur 
passenger  of  uncertain  seamanship.  Hugh  Massinger 
was  at  once  amused  and  bewildered  by  the  careless  con- 
fidence with  which  his  seafaring  friend  dashed  boldly  in 
and  out  among  brigs  and  schooners,  smacks  and  steam- 
ships, on  port  or  starboard  tack,  in  endless  confusion, 
backing  the  little  "Mud-Turtle"  to  hold  her  own  in  the 
unequal  contest  against  the  biggest  and  swiftest  craft  that 
sailed  the  river.  His  opinion  of  Relf  rose  rapidly  many 
degrees  in  mental  register  as  he  watched  him  tacking 
and  luffing  and  scudding  and  darting  with  cool  unconcern 
in  his  toy  tub  among  so  many  huge  and  swiftly  moving 
monsters. 

"Port  your  helm!"  Relf  cried  to  him  hastily  once,  as 
they  crossed  the  channel  just  abreast  of  Greenwich  Hos- 
pital. "Here's  another  sudden  death  down  upon  us  round 
the  Reach  yonder!"  And  even  as  he  spoke,  a  big  coal- 
steamer,  with  a  black  diamond  painted  allusively  on  her 
bulky  funnel,  turning  the  low  point  of  land  that  closed 
their  view,  bore  hastily  down  upon  them  from  the  oppo- 
site direction  with  menacing  swiftness.  Massinger,  doing 
his  best  to  obey  orders,  grew  bewildered  after  a  time  by 
the  glib  rapidity  of  his  friend's  commands.  He  was  per- 
fectly ready  to  act  as  he  was  bid  when  once  he  understood 
his  instructions;  but  the  seafaring  mind  seems  unable  to 
comprehend  that  landsmen  do  not  possess  an  intuitive 


18  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

knowledge  of  the  strange  names  bestowed  by  technical 
souls  upon  ropes,  booms,  gaffs,  and  mizzen-masts ;  so  that. 
Massinger's  attempts  to  carry  out  his  orders  in  a  prodi- 
gious hurry  proved  productive  for  the  most  part  rather  of 
blank  confusion  than  of  the  effect  intended  by  the  master 
skipper.  After  passing  Greenhithe,  however,  they  began 
to  find  the  channel  somewhat  clearer,  and  Relf  ceased 
for  a  while  to  skip  about  the  deck  like  the  little  hills  of 
the  Psalmist,  while  Massinger  felt  his  life  comparatively 
safe  at  times  for  three  minutes  together,  without  a  single 
danger  menacing  him  ahead  in  the  immediate  future  from 
port  or  starboard,  from  bow  or  stern,  from  brig  or  steam- 
er, from  grounding  or  collision. 

About  two  o'clock,  after  a  hot  run,  they  cast  anchor 
awhile  out  of  the  main  channel,  where  traders  ply  their 
flow  of  intercourse,  and  stood  by  to  eat  their  lunch  in 
peace  and  quietness  under  the  lee  of  a  projecting  point 
near  Gravesend. 

"If  wind  and  tide  serves  like  this,"  Relf  observed  philo- 
sophically, as  he  poured  out  a  glassful  of  beer  into  a  tin 
mug — the  "Mud-Turtle's"  appointments  were  all  of  the 
homeliest — "we  ought  to  get  down  to  Whitestrand  before 
an  easy  breeze  with  two  days'  sail,  sleeping  the  nights  in 
the  quiet  creeks  at  Leigh  and  Orfordness." 

"That  would  exactly  suit  me,"  Massinger  answered, 
draining  off  the  mugful  at  a  gulp  after  his  unusual  exer- 
tion. "I  wrote  a  hasty  line  to  my  cousin  in  Suffolk  this 
morning  telling  her  I  should  probably  reach  Whitestrand 
the  day  after  to-morrow,  wind  and  weather  permitting. — 
I  approve  of  your  ship,  Relf,  and  of  your  tinned  lobster 
too.  It's  fun  coming  down  to  the  great  deep  in  this  uncon- 
ventional way.  The  regulation  yacht,  with  sailors  and  a 
cook  and  a  floating  drawing-room,  my  soul  wouldn't  care 
for.  You  can  get  drawing-rooms  galore  any  day  in  Bel- 
gravia;  but  picnicking  like  this,  with  a  spice  of  adventure 
m  it,  falls  in  precisely  with  my  view  of  the  ends  of  exist- 
ence. 

"It's  a  cousin  you're  going  down  to  Suffolk  to  see. 
then? 

"Well,  yes;  a  cousin— a  sort  of  cousin;  a  Girton  girl- 
the  newest  thing  out  in  women.  I  call  her  a  cousin  for 


r>owN  STREAM.  19 

Convenience  sake.  Not  too  nearly  related,  if  it  comes  to 
that;  a  surfeit  of  family's  a  thing  to  be  avoided.'  But 
we're  a  decadent  tribe,  the  tribe  of  Massinger;  hardly 
any  others  of  us  left;  when  I  put  on  my  hat,  I  cover  all 
that  remains  of  us;  and  cousinhood's  a  capital  thing  in 
its  way  to  keep  up  under  certain  conditions.  It  enables  a 
man  to  pay  a  pretty  girl  a  great  deal  of  respectful  atten- 
tion, without  necessarily  binding  himself  down  to  anything 
definite  in  the  matrimonial  direction." 

"That's  rather  a  cruel  way  of  regarding  it,  isn't  it?" 
"Well,  my  dear  boy,  what's  a  man  to  do  in  these  jammed 
and  crushed  and  overcrowded  days  of  ours?  Nature 
demands  the  safety-valve  of  a  harmless  flirtation.  If  one 
can't  afford  to  marry,  the  natural  affections  will  find  an 
outlet,  on  a  cousin  or  somebody.  But  it's  quite  impossi- 
ble, as  things  go  nowadays,  for  a  penniless  man  to  dream 
of  taking  to  wife  a  penniless  woman  and  living  on  the 
sum  of  their  joint  properties.  According  to  Cocker, 
nought  and  nought  make  nothing.  So  one  must  just 
wait  till  one's  chance  in  life  turns  up,  one  way  or  the  other. 
If  you  make  a  fluke  some  day,  and  paint  a  successful 
picture,  or  write  a  successful  book,  or  get  off  a  hopeless 
murderer  at  the  Old  Bailey,  or  invent  a  new  nervous  dis- 
ease for  women,  or  otherwise  rise  to  a  sudden  fortune 
by  any  one  of  the  usual  absurd  roads,  then  you  can  marry 
your  pretty  cousin  or  other  little  girl  in  a  lordly  way  out 
of  your  own  resources.  If  not,  you  must  just  put  up  with 
the  plain  daughter  of  an  eminent  alderman  in  the  wine 
and  spirit  business,  or  connected  with  tallow,  or  doing 
a  good  thing  in  hides,  and  let  her  hard  cash  atone  vicari- 
ously for  your  own  want  of  tender  affection.  When  a  man 
has  no  patrimony,  he  must  obviously  make  it  up  in  mat- 
rimony. Only,  the  great  point  to  avoid  is  letting  the 
penniless  girl  meanwhile  get  too  deep  a  hold  upon  your 
personal  feelings.  The  wisest  men — like  me,  for  example 
— are  downright  fools  when  it  comes  to  high  play  on  the 
domestic  instincts.  Even  Achilles  had  a  vulnerable  point, 
>ou  know.  So  has  every  wise  man.  With  Achilles,  it 
vas  the  heel ;  with  us,  it's'  the  heart.  The  heart  will  wreck 
the  profoundest  and  most  deliberate  philosopher  living. 
I  acknowledge  it  myself.  I  ought  to  wait,  of  course,  till 


SO  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

I  catch  the  eminent  alderman's  richly  endowed  daughter. 
Instead  of  that,  I  shall  doubtless  fling  myself  away  like  a 
born  fool  upon  the  pretty  cousin  or  some  other  equally 
unprofitable  investment/' 

"Well,  I  hope  you  will,"  Relf  answered,  cutting  himself 
a  huge  chunk  of  bread  with  his  pocket  clasp-knife.  "I 
am  awfully  glad  to  hear  you  say  so.  For  your  own  sake, 
I  hope  you'll  keep  your  word.  I  hope  you  won't  stifle 
everything  you've  got  that's  best  within  you  for  the  sake 
of  money  and  position  and  success. — Have  a  bit  of  this 
corned  beef,  will  you? — A  woman  who  sells  herself  for 
money  is  bad  enough,  though  it's  woman's  way — they've 
all  been  trained  to  it  for  generations.  But  a  man  who 
sells  himself  for  money — who  takes  himself  to  market 
for  the  highest  bidder — who  makes  capital  out  of  his 
face  and  his  manners  and  his  conversation — is  absolutely 
contemptible,  and  nothing  short  of  it. — I  could  never  go 
on  knowing  you,  if  I  thought  you  capable  of  it.  But  I 
don't  think  you  so.  I'm  sure  you  do  yourself  a  gross 
injustice.  You're  a  great  deal  better  than  you  pretend 
yourself.  If  this  occasion  ever  actually  arose,  you'd  follow 
your  better  and  not  your  worse  nature. — I'll  trouble  you 
for  the  mustard." 

Massinger  passed  it,  and  pretended  to  feel  awfully 
bored.  "I'm  sure  I  don't  know,"  he  answered;  "I  shall 
wait  and  see.  I  don't  undertake  either  to  read  or  to  guide 
my  own  character.  According  to  the  fashionable  modern 
doctrine,  it  was  all  settled  for  me  irrevocably  beforehand 
by  my  parents  and  grandparents  in  past  generations.  I 
merely  stand  by  and  watch  where  it  leads  me,  with  passive 
resignation  and  silent  curiosity.  The  attitude's  not  entirely 
devoid  of  plot-interest.  It's  amusing  to  sit,  like  the  gods 
of  Epicurus,  enthroned  on  high,  and  look  down  from 
without  with  critical  eyes  upon  the  gradual  development 
on  the  stage  of  life  of  one's  own  history  and  one's  own 
idiosyncrasy." 


ARCADIA.  21 

CHAPTER  III 

ARCADIA. 

The  village  of  Whitestrand,  on  the  Suffolk  coast — an  oasis 
in  a  stretch  of  treeless  desert — was,  and  is,  one  of  the 
remotest  and  most  primitive  spots  to  be  found  anywhere 
on  the  shores  of  England.  The  railways,  running  inland 
away  to  the  west,  have  left  it  for  ages  far  in  the  lurch; 
and  even  the  two  or  three  belated  roads  that  converge 
upon  it  from  surrounding  villages  lead  nowhere.  It  is, 
so  to  speak,  an  absolute  terminus.  The  World's  End  is 
the  whimsical  title  of  the  last  house  at  Whitestrand.  The 
little  river  Char  that  debouches  into  the  sea  just  below  the 
church,  with  its  scattered  group  of  thatched  cottages, 
cuts  off  the  hamlet  effectually  with  its  broad  estuary  from 
the  low  stretch  of  reclaimed  and  sluice-drained  pasture- 
land  of  winr  grass  that  rolls  r.wav  to  southward.  On  the 
north,  a  rank  salt  marsh  hems  it  in  with  its  broad  flats  of 
sedge  and  thrift  and  wan  sea-lavender;  and  eastward,  the 
low  line  of  the  German  Ocean  spreads  dimly  in  front  its 
shallow  horizon  on  the  very  level  of  the  beach  and  the 
village.  Only  to  the  west  is  there  any  dry  land,  a  sandy 
heath  across  whose  barren  surface  the  three  roads  from 
the  neighboring  hamlets  meander  meaninglessly  by  tortu- 
ous curves  toward  the  steeple  of  Whitestrand.  All  around, 
the  country  lies  flat,  and  singularly  unprofitable.  The 
village,  in  fact,  occupies  a  tiny  triangular  peninsula  of 
level  ground,  whose  isthmus  is  formed  by  the  narrow 
belt  of  heath-clad  waste  which  alone  connects  it  with 
the  outer  universe. 

The  very  name  Whitestrand,  as  old  as  the  days  of  the 
Danish  invasion  of  the  East  Anglian  plain,  at  once  de- 
scribes the  one  striking  and  noteworthy  feature  of  the 
entire  district.  It  has  absolutely  no  salient  point  of  its 
own  of  any  sort,  except  the  hard  and  firm  floor  of  pure 
white  sand  that  extends  for  miles  and  miles  on  either 
side  of  the  village.  The  sands  begin  at  the  diked  land 
south  of  the  river — rescued  from  the  tide  by  Oliver's 
Dutch  engineers — and  narrowing  gradually  as  they  pass 
northward,  disappear  altogether  into  low  muddy  cliffs 


M  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

some  four  or  five  miles  beyond  the  church  of  White- 
strand.  No  strip  of  coast  anywhere  in  England  can  boast 
such  a  splendid  beach  of  uniform  whiteness,  firmness,  and 
solidity.  At  Whitestrand  itself,  the  sands  extend  for 
three-quarters  of  a  mile  seaward  at  low  tide,  and  are'so 
smooth  and  compact  in  their  consistent  level,  that  a  horse 
can  gallop  over  them  at  full  speed  without  leaving  so  much 
as  the  mark  of  a  hoof  upon  the  even  surface  of  that  natural 
arena.  Whitestranders  are  enormously  proud  of  their 
beach;  the  people  of  Walberswick,  a  rival  village  some 
miles  off,  with  a  local  reputation  for  what  passes  in  Suffolk 
as  rural  picturesqueness,  maliciously  declare  this  is  be- 
cause the  poor  Whitestranders — heaven  help  them! — have 
nothing  else  on  earth  to  be  proud  of.  Such  remarks, 
however,  savor  no  doubt  of  mere  neighborly  jealousy: 
the  Walberswick  folk,  having  no  beach  at  all  of  their  own 
to  brag  about,  are  therefore  naturally  intolerant  of  beaches 
in  other  places. 

All  Whitestrand — what  there  was  left  of  it — belonged  to 
Mr.  Wyville  Meysey.  His  family  had  bought  the  manor 
and  estate  a  hundred  years  before,  from  their  elder  repre- 
sentatives, when  the  banking  firm  of  Mersey's  in  the 
Strand  was  in  the  first  heydey  of  its  financial  glory. 
Unhappily  for  him,  his  particular  ancestor,  a  collateral 
member  of  the  great  house,  had  preferred  the  respectable 
position  of  a  country  gentleman  to  an  active  share  in  the 
big  concern  in  London.  From  that  day  forth  the  sea  had 
been  steadily  eating  away  the  Meysey  estate,  till  very  little 
was  left  of  it  now  but  salt  marsh  and  sandhills  and  swampy 
pasture-lands. 

It  was  Tuesday  when  Hugh  Massinger  and  Warren 
Relf  set  sail  from  the  Tower  on  their  voyage  in  the  "Mud- 
Turtle"  down  the  crowded  tidal  Thames;  on  Thursday 
morning,  two  pretty  girls  sat  together  on  the  roots  of  ail 
old  gnarled  poplar  that  overhung  the  exact  point  where 
the  Char  empties  itself  into  the  German  Ocean.  The 
Whitestrand  poplar,  indeed,  had  formed  for  three  cen- 
turies a  famous  landmark  to  seafaring  men  who  coast 
round  the  inlets  of  the  Eastern  Counties.  In  the  quaint 
words  of  the  old  conuty  historian,  it  rose  "from  the  manor 
of  Whitestrand  straight  up  toward  the  kingdom  of 


ARCADIA.  23 

heaven;"  and  round  its  knotted  roots  and  hollow  trunk 
the  current  ran  fierce  at  the  turn  of  the  tides,  for  it  formed 
the  one  frail  barrier  to  the  encroachment  of  the  sea  on  that 
portion  of  the  low  and  decaying  Suffolk  coast-line.  Every- 
body had  known  the  Whitestrand  poplar  as  a  point  to 
sail  by  ever  since  the  spacious  days  of  great  Elizabeth. 
When  you  get  in  a  line  -with  the  steeple  of  VValberswick, 
with  the  windmill  on  Snade  Hill  opening  to  the  right, 
you  can  run  straight  up  the  mouth  of  Char  toward  the 
tiny  inland  port  of  Woodford.  Vessels  of  small  burden 
in  distress  off  the  coast  in  easterly  gales  often  take  shelter 
in  this  little  creek  as  a  harbor  of  refuge  from  heavy  weather 
on  the  German  Ocean. 

The  elder  of  the  two  girls  who  sat  together  picturesquely 
on  this  natural  rustic  seat  was  dark  and  handsome,  and  so 
like  Hugh  Massinger  himself  in  face  and  feature,  that  no 
one  would  have  much  difficulty  in  recognizing  her  for  the 
second  cousin  of  whom  he  had  spoken,  Elsie  Challoner. 
Her  expression  was  more  earnest  and  serious,  to  be  sure, 
than  the  London  poet's;  her  type  of  beauty  was  more 
tender  and  true;  but  she  had  the  same  large  melting 
pathetic  eyes,  the  same  melancholy  and  chiseled  mouth, 
the  same  long  black  wiry  hair,  and  the  same  innate  grace 
of  bearing  and  manner  in  every  movement  as  her  Byronic 
relative.  The  younger  girl,  her  pupil,  was  fairer  and 
shorter,  a  pretty  and  delicate  blonde  of  eighteen,  with 
clear  blue  eyes  and  wistful'  mouth,  and  a  slender  but  dainty 
girlish  figure.  They  sat  hand  in  hand  on  the  roots  of  the 
tree,  half  overarched  by  its  hollow  funnel,  looking  out 
together  over  the  low  flat  sea,  whose  fresh  breeze  blew 
hard  in  their  faces,  with  the  delicious  bracing  coolness 
and  airiness  peculiar  to  the  shore  of  the  German  Ocean. 
There  is  no  other  air  in  all  England  to  equal  that  strong 
air  of  Suffolk ;  it  seems  to  blow  right  through  and  through 
one,  and  to  brush  away  the  dust  and  smoke  of  town  from 
all  one's  pores  with  a  single  whiff  of  its  clear  bright  pur- 
ity. 

"How  do  you  think  your  cousin'll  come,  Elsie?"  the 
younger  girl  asked,  twisting  her  big  straw  hat  by  its  strings 
carelessly  in  her  hands.  "I  expect  he'll  drive  over  in  a 
carriage  from  Daw's  from  the  Almundham  Station," 


24  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

"I'm  sure  I  don't  know,  dear,"  the  elder  and  darker 
answered  with  a  smile.— "But  how  awfully  interested  you 
seem  to  be,  Winifred,  in  this  celebrated  cousin  of  mine! 
What  a  thing  it  is  for  a  man  to  be  a  poet!  You've  talked 
of  nothing  else  the  whole  morning." 

Winifred  laughed.  "Cousins  are  so  very  rare  in  this 
part  of  the  country,  you  see,"  she  said  apologetically.  "We 
don't  get  sight  of  a  cousin,  you  know — or,  for  the  matter 
of  that,  of  any  other  male  human  being,  erect  upon  two 
legs,  and  with  a  beard  on  his  face — twice  in  a  twelvemonth. 
The  live  young  man  is  rapidly  becoming  an  extinct  animal 
in  these  parts,  I  believe.  He  exists  only  in  the  form  of  a 
photograph.  We  shall  soon  have  him  stuffed,  whenever 
we  catch  him,  or  exhibit  a  pair  of  his  boots,  with  a  label 
attached,  in  a  glass  case  at  all  the  museums,  side  by  side 
with  the  dodo,  and  the  something-or-other-osaurian.  A 
live  young  man  in  a  tourist  suit  is  quite  a  rarity,  I  declare, 
nowadays. — And  then  a  poet  too!  I  never  in  my  life  set 
eyes  yet  upon  a  genuine  all-wool  unadulterated  poet. — And 
you  say  he's  handsome,  extremely  handsome!  Hand- 
some, and  a  poet,  and  a  live  young  man,  all  at  once,  like 
three  gentlemen  rolled  into  one,  as  Mrs.  Malaprop  says: 
that's  really  something  to  make  one's  self  excited  about." 

"Winifred!  Winifred!  you  naughty  bad  girl!"  Elsie 
laughed  out,  half  in  jest  and  half  in  earnest,  "moderate 
your  transports.  You've  got  no  sense  of  propriety  in  you, 
I  do  believe — and  no  respect  for  your  instructress' 
dignity  either.  I  oughn't  to  let  you  talk  on  like  that.  It 
isn't  becoming  in  the  guardian  of  youth.  The  guardian 
of  youth  ought  sternly  to  insist  on  due  reticence  in  speak- 
ing of  strangers,  especially  when  they  belong  to  the  male 
persuasion. — But  as  it's  only  Hugh,  after  all,  I  suppose  it 
really  doesn't  matter.  I  look  upon  Hugh,  Wrinifred,  like 
my  own  brother." 

"What  a  jolly  name,  Hugh!"  Winifred  cried,  enthusi- 
astically. "It  goes  so  awfully  well  together,  too,  Hugh 
Massinger.  There's  a  great  deal  in  names  going  well 
together.  I  wouldn't  marry  a  man  called  Adair,  now, 
Elsie,  or  O'Dowd,  either,  not  if  you  were  to  pay  me  for  it 
(though  why  you  should  pay  me,  I'm  sure  I  do'n't  know), 
for  Winifred  Adair  doesn't  sound  a  bit  nice;  and  vet 


ARCADIA.  25 

Elsie  Adair  goes  just  beautifully. — Winifred  Challoner — 
that's  not  bad,  either.  Three  syllables,  with  the  accent  on 
the  first.  Winifred  Massinger — that  sounds  very  well 
too;  best  of  all,  perhaps.  I  shouldn't  mind  marrying  a 
man  named  Massinger." 

"Other  things  equal,"  Elsie  put  in,  laughing. 

"Oh,  of  course  he  must  have  a  mustache,"  Winifred 
went  on  in  quite  a  serious  voice.  "Even  if  a  man  was  a 
poet,  and  was  called  Massinger,  and  had  lovely  eyes,  and 
could  sing  like  a  nightingale,  but  hadn't  a  mustache  — 
a  beautiful,  long,  wiry,  black  mustache,  like  the  curate's 
at  Snade — I  wouldn't  for  the  world  so  much  as  look  at 
him.  No  close-shaven  young  man  need  apply.  I  insist 
upon  a  mustache  as  absolutely  indispensable.  Not  red: 
red  is  quite  inadmissible.  If  ever  I  marry — and  I  suppose 
I  shall  have  to,  some  day,  to  please  papa — I  shall  lay  it 
down  as  a  fixed  point  in  the  settlements,  or  whatever  you 
call  them,  that  my  husband  must  have  a  black  mustache, 
and  must  bind  himself  down  by  contract  beforehand  as 
long  as  I  live  never  to  shave  it." 

Elsie  shaded  her  eyes  with  her  hand  and  looked  out 
seaward.  "I  shan't  let  you  talk  so  any  more,  Winnie," 
she  said,  with  a  vigorous  effort  to  be  sternly  authoritative. 
"It  isn't  right;  and  you  know  it  isn't.  The  instructress 
of  youth  must  exert  her  authority.  We  ought  to  be  as 
grave  as  a  couple  of  church  owls. — What  a  funny  small 
sailing  boat  that  is  on  the  sea  out  yonder!  A  regular  little 
tub!  So  flat  and  broad!  She's  the  roundest  boat  I  ever  saw 
in  my  life.  How  she  dances  about  like  a  walnut-shell  on 
the  top  of  the  water!" 

"Oh,  that's  the  'Mud-Turtle!'"  Winifred  cried  eagerly, 
anxious  to  display  her  nautical  knowledge  to  the  full  extent 
before  Elsie,  the  town-bred  governess.  "She's  a  painter's 
yawl,  you  know.  I've  seen  her  often.  She  belongs  to  an 
artist,  a  marine  artist,  who  comes  this  way  every  summer 
to  sketch  and  paint  mud-banks.  He  lies  by  up  here  in  the 
shallows  of  the  creek,  and  does,  oh,  the  funniest  little 
pictures  you  ever  saw,  all  full  of  nothing — just  mud  and 
water  and  weeds  and  herons — or  else  a  great  flat  stretch 
of  calm  sea,  with  a  couple  of  gulls  and  a  buoy  in  the 
foreground.  They're  very  clever,  I  suppose,  for  people 


26  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

who  understand  those  things;  but,  like  the  crater  of  Vesu- 
vius, there's  nothing  in  them.  She  can  go  anywhere, 
though,  even  in  a  ditch — the  'Mud-Turtle'  can;  and  she 
sails  like  a  bird,  when  she's  got  all  her  canvas  on.  You 
should  just  see  her  in  a  good  breeze,  putting  out  to  sea 
before  a  fresh  sou'-wester!" 

"She's  coming  in  here  now,  I  think,"  Elsie  murmured, 
half  aloud. — "Oh,  no,  she's  not;  she's  gone  beyond  it, 
toward  the  point  at  Walberswick." 

"That's  only  to  tack,"  Winifred  answered,  with  con- 
scious pride  in  her  superior  knowledge.  ''She's  got  to 
tack  because  of  the  wind,  you  know.  She'll  come  up  the 
creek  as  soon  as  she  catches  the  breeze.  She'll  luff  soon. — 
Look  there,  now;  they're  luffing  her.  Then  in  a  minute 
they'll  put  her  about  a  bit,  and  tack  again  for  the  creek's 
mouth. — There  you  are,  you  see:  she's  tacking,  as  I  told 
you. — That's  the  artist,  the  shorter  man  in  the  sailor's 
jersey.  He  looks  like  a  common  A.  B.  when  he's  got  up 
so  in  his  seafaring  clothes;  but  when  you  hear  him  speak, 
you  can  tell  at  once  by  his  voice  he's  really  a  gentleman. 
I  don't  know  who  the  second  man  is,  though,  the  tall  man 
in  the  tweed  suit:  he's  not  the  one  that  generally  comes — 
that's  Mr.  Potts.  But,  oh,  isn't  he  handsome!  I  wonder 
if  they're  going  to  sail  close  alongside?  I  do  hope  they 
are.  The  water's  awfully  deep  right  in  by  the  poplar  here. 
If  they  turn  up  the  creek,  they'll  run  under  the  roots  just 
below  us. — They  seem  to  be  making  signs  to  us  now. — 
Why,  Elsie,  the  man  in  the  tweed  suit's  waving  his  hand 
to  you!" 

Elsie's  face  was  crimson  to  look  upon.  As  the  instruct- 
ress of  youth,  she  felt  herself  distinctly  discomposed.  "It's 
my  cousin,"  she  cried,  jumping  up  in  a  tremor  of  excite- 
ment, and  waving  back  to  him  eagerly  \vith  her  tiny  hand- 
kerchief. "It's  Hugh  Massinger!  How  very  delightful! 
He  must  have  come  down  by  sea  with  the  painter." 

"They're  going  to  run  in  just  close  by  the  tree,"  Wini- 
fred exclaimed,  quite  excited  also  at  the  sudden  apparition 
of  the  real  live  poet.  "Oh,  Elsie,  doesn't  he  just  look 
poetical!  A  man  with  a  face  and  eyes  like  that  couldn't 
help  writing  poetry,  even  if  he  didn't  want  to.  He  must 
be  a  friend  of  Mr.  Relf's,  I  suppose.  What  a  lovely, 


ARCADIA.  27 

romantic,  poetical  way  to  come  down  from  London — toss- 
ing about  at  sea  in  a  glorious  breeze  on  a  wee  bit  of  a  tub 
like  that  funny  little  'Mud-Turtle!'  " 

By  this  time,  the  yawl,  with  the  breeze  in  her  sails,  had 
run  rapidly  up  before  the  wind  for  the  mouth  of  the  river, 
and  was  close  upon  them  by  the  roots  of  the  poplar.  As 
it  neared  the  tree,  Hugh  stood  up  on  the  deck,  bronzed  and 
ruddy  with  his  three  days'  yachting,  and  called  out  cheer- 
ily in  a  loud  voice,  "Hullo,  Elsie,  this  is  something  like  a 
welcome!  We  arrive  at  the  port,  after  a  stormy  passage 
on  the  high  seas,  and  are  met  at  its  mouth  by  a  deputation 
of  the  leading  inhabitants.  Shall  we  take  you  on  board 
with  your  friend  at  once,  and  carry  you  up  the  rest  of 
the  way  to  Whitestrand?" 

Elsie's  heart  came  up  into  her  mouth.  She  would  have 
given  the  world  to  be  able  to  cry  out  cordially,  "Oh, 
Hugh,  that'd  be  just  lovely;"  but  propriety  and  a  sense 
of  the  duties  of  her  position  compelled  her  instead  to 
answer  in  a  set  voice,  "Well,  thank  you ;  it's  ever  so  kind 
of  you,  Hugh;  but  we're  here  in  our  own  grounds,  you 
know,  already. — This  is  Miss  Meysey,  Winifred  Meysey: 
Winnie,  this  is  my  cousin  Hugh,  dear.  Now  you  know 
one  another. — Hugh,  I'm  so  awfully  glad  to  see  you!" 

\Varren  Relf  turned  the  bow  toward  the  tree,  and  ran 
the  yawl  close  alongside  till  her  tiny  taftrail  almost  touched 
the  roots  of  the  big-  poplar.  "That's  better,"  he  said. — 
"Now,  Massinger,  introduce  us.  You  do  it  like  a  Lord 
Chamberlain,  I  know. — You  won't  come  up  with  us,  then, 
Miss  Challoner?" 

Elsie  bent  her  head.  "We  musn't,"  she  said  candidly, 
"though  I  own  I  should  like  it. — It's  so  very  long  since 
I've  seen  you,  Hugh.  Where  are  you  going  to  stop  at 
in  the  village?  You  must  come  up  this  very  afternoon 
to  see  me."  , 

Hugh  bowed  a  bow  of  profound  acquiescence.  "If  you 
say  so,"  he  answered  with  less  languor  than  his  wont, 
"your  will  is  law.  We  shall  certainly  come  up. — I  suppose 
I  may  bring  my  friend  Relf  with  me — the  owner  and 
skipper  of  this  magnificent  and  luxurious  vessel? — We've 
had  the  most  delightful  passage  down,  Elsie.  In  future, 
in  fact,  I  mean  to  live  permanently  upon  a  yawl.  It's 


28  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

glorious  fun.  You  sail  all  day  before  the  free,  free  breeze ; 
and  you  dodge  the  steamers  that  try  to  run  you  down; 
and  you  put  up  at  night  in  a  convenient  creek;  and  you 
sleep  like  a  top  on  the  bare  boards;  and  you  live  upon 
sea-biscuit  and  bottled  beer  and  the  fresh  sea-air;  and 
you  feel  like  a  king  or  a  Berserker  or  a  street  arab ;  and 
you  wonder  why  the  dickens  you  were  ever  such  a  stupid 
fool  before  as  to  wear  black  clothes,  and  lie  on  a  feather- 
bed, and  use  a  knife  and  fork,  and  eat  olives  and  pateds 
foie  gras,  and  otherwise  give  way  to  the  ridiculous  foibles 
of  an  effete  and  superannuated  western  civilization.  I  never 
in  my  life  felt  anything  like  it.  The  blood  of  the  old  Sea- 
kings  comes  up  in  my  veins,  and  I've  been  rhyming  'vik- 
ing' and  'liking,'  and  'striking'  and  'diking,'  ever  since 
we  got  well  clear  of  London  Bridge,  till  this  present 
moment. — I  shall  write  a  volume  of  Sonnets  of  the  Sea, 
and  dedicate  them  duly  to  you — and  Miss  Meysey." 

As  for  Winifred,  with  a  red  rose  spreading  over  all  her 
face,  she  said  nothing;  but  twirling  her  hat  still  in  her 
hand,  she  gazed  and  gazed  open-eyed,  and  almost  open- 
mouthed — except  that  an  open  mouth  is  so  very  unbecom- 
ing— upon  the  wonderful  stranger  with  the  big  dark 
eyes,  who  had  thus  dropped  down  from  the  clouds  upon 
the  manor  of  Whitestrand.  He  was  handsome,  indeed — 
as  handsome  as  her  dearest  dreams ;  he  had  a  black  mus- 
tache, strictly  according  to  contract;  and  he  talked  with 
an  easy  offhand  airy  grace — the  easy  grace  of  the  Cheyne 
Row  Club — that  was  wholly  foreign  to  all  her  previous 
experience  of  the  live  young'men  of  the  county  of  Suffolk. 
His  tongue  was  the  pen  of  a  ready  writer.  '  He  poured 
forth  his  language  with  the  full  and  regular  river-like 
flow  of  a  practiced  London  journalist  and  'first-leader 
hand.  Crisp  adjectives  to  him  came  easy  as  Yes  or  Xo, 
and  epigram  flowed  from  his  lips  like  water. 

"I'll  put  her  in  nearer,"  Warren  Relf  said  quietly,  after 

a  few  minutes,  glancing  with  mute  admiration  at' Elsie's 

beautiful  face  and  slim  figure.— "We're  in  no  hurry  to  go, 

Df  course,  Massinger;   we've  got  the  whole  day  "all  free 

us  —That's  the  best  of  navigating  your  own  craft 

ou  see,  Miss  Challoner;  it  makes  you  ind'ependent  of  all 

the  outer  world  beside.     Bradshaw  ceases  to   exercise 


ARCADIA.  29 

over  you  his  iron  tyranny.  You've  never  to  catch  the  four- 
twenty.  You  go  where  you  like;  you  stop  when  you 
please;  you  start  when  you  choose;  and  if,  when  you  get 
there,  you  don't  like  it,  why  you  simply  go  on  again  till 
you  reach  elsewhere.  It's  the  freest  life,  this  life  on  the 
ocean  wave,  that  ever  was  imagined;  though  I  believe 
Byron  has  said  the  same  thing  already. — We'll  lie  by  here 
for  half  an  hour,  Hugh,  and  if  you  prefer  it,  I'll  put  you 
ashore,  and  you  can  walk  up  through  the  grounds  of  the 
Hall,  while  I  navigate  the  ship  to  the  Fisherman's  Rest, 
up  yonder  at  Whitestrand." 

As  he  spoke,  he  put  over  the  boom  for  a  moment,  to  lay 
her  in  nearer  to  the  roots  of  the  tree.  It  was  an  unlucky 
movement.  Winifred  was  sitting  close  to  the  water's  edge, 
with  her  hat  in  her  hand,  dangling  over  the  side.  The 
boom,  flapping  suddenly  in  the  wind  with  an  unexpected 
twirl,  struck  her  wrist  a  smart  blow,  and  made  her  drop 
the  hat  with  a  cry  of  pain  into  the  current  of  the  river. 
Tide  was  on  the  ebb;  and  almost  before  they  had  time 
to  see  what  had  happened,  the  hat  had  floated  on  the  swift 
stream  far  out  of  reach,  and  was  careering  hastily  in 
circling  eddies  on  its  way  seaward. 

Hugh  Massinger  was  too  good  an  actor,  and  too  good 
a  swimmer  into  the  bargain,  to  let  slip  such  a  splendid 
opportunity  for  a  bit  of  cheap  and  effective  theatrical 
display.  The  eyes  of  Europe  and  Elsie  were  upon  him — 
not  to  mention  the  unknown  young  lady,  who,  for  aught 
he  knew  to  the  contrary,  might  perhaps  turn  out  to  be  a 
veritable  heiress  to  the  manor  of  Whitestrand.  He  had 
on  his  old  gray  tourist  knickerbocker  suit,  which  had 
seen  service,  and  would  be  none  the  worse,  if  it  came  to 
that,  for  one  more  wetting.  In  a  second,  he  had  pulled 
off  his  coat  and  boots,  sprung  lightly  to  the  farther  deck 
of  the  "Mud-Turtle,"  and  taken  a  header  in  his  knicker- 
bockers and  stockings  and  flannel  shirt  into  the  muddy 
water.  In  nothing  does  a  handsome  man  look  handsomer 
than  in  knickerbockers  and  flannels.  The  tide  was  setting 
strong  in  a  fierce  stream  round  the  corner  of  the  tree, 
and  a  few  stout  strokes,  made  all  the  stouter  by  the  con- 
sciousness of  an  admiring  trio  of  spectators,  brought  the 
eager  swimmer  fairly  abreast  of  the  truant  hat  in  mid- 


30  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

current.  He  grasped  it  hastily  in  his  outstretched  hand, 
waved  it  with  a  flourish  high  above  his  head,  and  gave  it 
a  twist  or  two  of  playful  triumph,  all  wet  and  dripping, 
in  his  graceful  fingers,  before  he  turned.  An  act  of  daring 
is  nothing  if  not  gracefully  or  masterfully  performed. — 
And  then  he  wheeled  round  to  swim  back  to  the  yawl 
again. 

In  that,  however,  he  had  reckoned  clearly  without  his 
host.  The  water  proved  in  fact  a  most  inhospitable  enter- 
tainer. Hand  over  hand,  he  battled  hard  against  the  rapid 
current,  tying  the  recovered  hat  loosely  around  his  neck 
by  its  ribbon  strings,  and  striking  out  vigorously  with  his 
cramped  and  trammeled  legs  in  the  vain  effort  to  stem 
and  breast  the  rushing  water.  For  a  minute  or  so  he 
struggled  manfully  with  the  tide,  putting  all  his  energy 
into  each  stroke  of  his  thighs,  and  making  his  muscles 
ache  with  the  violence  of  his  efforts.  But  it  was  all  to  no 
purpose.  The  stream  wras  too  strong  for  him.  Human 
thews  could  never  bear  it  down.  After  thirty  or  forty 
strokes  he  looked  in  front  of  him  casually,  and  saw,  to 
his  surprise,  not  to  say  discomfiture,  that  he  was  farther 
away  from  the  yawl  than  ever.  This  was  distressing — 
this  was  even  ignominious ;  to  any  other  man  than  Hugh 
Massinger,  it  would  indeed  have  been  actually  alarming. 
But  to  Hugh  the  ignominy  was  far  more  than  the  peril: 
he  was  so  filled  with  the  sentimental  and  personal  side  of 
the  difficulty — the  consciousness  that  he  was  showing 
himself  off  to  bad  advantage  before  the  eyes  of  two  beau- 
tiful girls — that  he  never  even  dreamt  of  the  serious 
danger  of  being  swept  out  to  sea  and  there  drowned  hope- 
lessly. He  only  thought  to  himself  how  ridiculous  and 
futile  he  must  needs  look  to  that  pair  of  womankind  in 
having  attempted  with  so  light  a  heart  a  feat  that  was 
utterly  beyond  his  utmost  powers. 

Vanity  is  a  mighty  ruler  of  men.  If  Hugh  Massinger 
had  stopped  there  till  he  died,  he  would  never  have  called 
aloud  for  help.  Better  death  with  honor,  on  the  damp 
bed  of  a  muddy  stream,  than  the  shame  and  sin  of  con- 
fessing one's  self  openly  beaten  in  a  fair  fight  by  a  mere 
insignificant  tidal  river.  It  was  Elsie  who  first  recognized 
the  straits  he  was  in— for  though  love  is  blind,  yet  love 


BURIDAN'S  ASS.  SI 

is  sharp-eyed — and  cried  out  to  Warren  Relf  in  an  agony 
of  fear:  "He  can't  get  back!  The  stream's  too  much 
for  him!  Quick,  quick!  You've  not  a  moment  to  lose! 
Put  about  the  boat  at  once  and  save  him!" 

With  a  hasty  glance,  Relf  saw  that  she  was  right,  and 
that  Hugh  was  unable  to  battle  successfully  with  the  rapid 
current.  He  turned  the  yawl's  head  with  all  speed  out- 
ward, and  took  a  quick  tack  to  get  behind  the  baffled 
swimmer  and  intercept  him,  if  possible,  on  his  way  toward 
the  sea,  whither  he  was  now  so  quickly  and  helplessly 
drifting. 


CHAPTER  IV. 
BURIDAN'S  ASS. 

For  a  minute  the  two  girls  stood  in  breathless  suspense: 
then  Warren  Relf,  cutting  in  behind  with  the  yawl,  flung 
out  a  coil  of  rope  in  a  ring  toward  Hugh  with  true  sea- 
faring dexterity,  so  that  it  struck  the  water  straight  in 
front  of  his  face  flat  like  a  quoit,  enabling  him  to  grasp 
it  and  haul  himself  in  without  the  slightest  difficulty.  The 
help  came  in  the  nick  of  time,  yet  most  inopportunely. 
Hugh  would  have  given  worlds  just  then  to  be  able  to 
disregard  his  proffered  aid,  and  to  swim  ashore  by  the  tree 
in  lordly  independence  without  extraneous  assistance.  It 
is  grotesque  to  throw  yourself  wildly  in,  like  a  hero  or  a 
Leander,  and  then  have  to  be  tamely  pulled  out  again  by 
another  fellow.  But  he  recognized  the  fact  that  the  strug- 
gle was  all  in  vain,  and  that  the  interests  of  English  litera- 
ture and  of  a  well-known  insurance  office  in  which  he 
held  a  small  life  policy,  imperatively  demanded  acquiesc- 
ence on  his  part  in  the  friendly  rescue.  He  grasped  the 
rope  with  a  very  bad  grace  indeed,  and  permitted  Relf 
to  haul  him  in,  hand  over  hand,  to  the  side  of  the  "Mud- 
Turtle." 

Yet,  as  soon  as  he  stood  once  more  on  the  yawl's  deck, 
dripping  and  unpicturesque  in  his  clinging  clothes,  but 
with  honor  safe,  and  the  lost  hat  now  clasped  tight  in  his 


32  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

triumphant  right  hand,  it  began  to  occur  to  him  that, 
after  all,  the  little  adventure  had  turned  out  in  its  way 
quite  as  romantic,  not  to  say  effective,  as  could  have  been 
reasonably  expected.  He  did  not  know  the  current  ran 
so  fast,  or  perhaps  he  would  never  have  attempted  the 
Quixotic  task  of  recovering  that  plain  straw  hat  with  the 
blue  ribbon — worth  at  best  half  a  crown  net — from  its 
angry  eddies;  yet  the  very  fact  that  he  had  exposed  him- 
self to  danger,  real  danger,  however  unwittingly,  on  a 
lady's  behalf,  for  so  small  a  cause,  threw  a  not  unpleasing 
dash  of  romance  and  sentiment  into  his  foolish  and  fool- 
hardy bit  of  theatrical  gallantry.  To  risk  your  life  for  a 
plain  straw  hat — and  for  a  lady's  sake — smacks,  when  one 
comes  to  think  of  it,  of  antique  chivalry.  He  forgave 
himself  his  wet  and  unbecoming  attire,  as  he  handed  the 
hat,  with  as  graceful  a  bow  as  circumstances  permitted, 
from  the  yawl's  side  to  Winifred  Meysey,  who  stretched 
out  her  hands,  all  blushes  and  thanks  and  apologetic 
regrets,  from  the  roots  of  the  poplar  by  the  edge,  to 
receive  it. 

"And  now,  Elsie,"  Hugh  cried,  with  such  virile  cheer- 
fulness as  a  man  can  assume  who  stands  shivering  in  wet 
clothes  before  a  keen  east  wind,  "perhaps  we'd  better 
make  our- way  at  once  up  to  Whitestrand  without  further 
delay  to  change  our  garments.  Hood  makes  garments 
rhyme  under  similar  conditions  to  'clinging  like  cere- 
ments/ and  I  begin  to  perceive  now  the  wisdom  of  his 
allusion.  A  very  bad  rhyme,  but  very  good  reason.  They 
do  cling,  if  you'll  permit  me  to  say  so — they  cling,  indeed, 
a  trifle  unpleasantly. — Good-bye  for  the  present.  I'll  see 
you  again  this  afternoon  in  a  drier  and,  I  hope,  a  more 
becoming  costume. — Miss  Meysey,  I'm  afraid  your  hat's 
spoiled. — Put  her  about  now,  Relf.  Let's  run  up  quick. 
I  don't  mind  how  soon  I  get  to  Whitestrand." 

Warren  Relf  headed  the  yawl  round  with  the  wind, 
and  they  ran  merrily  before  the  stiff  breeze  up  stream 
toward  the  village.  Meanwhile,  Hugh  stood  still  on  the 
deck  in  his  dripping  clothes,  smiling  as  benignly  as  if 
nothing  had  happened,  and  waving  farewell  with  one  airy 
hand— in  spite  of  chattering  teeth— to  Elsie  and  Winifred. 
The  two  girls,  taken  aback  by  the  incident,  looked  after 


BURIDAN'S  ASS.  33 

them  with  arms  clasped  round  one  another's  waists.  Wini- 
fred was  the  first  to  break  abruptly  the  Hushed  silence  of 
their  joint  admiration. 

"Oh,  Elsie,"  she  cried,  "it  was  so  grand!  Wasn't  it 
just  magnificent  of  him  to  jump  in  like  that  after  my  poor 
old  straw  hat?  I  never  saw  anything  so  lovely  in  my  life. 
Exactly  like  the  sort  of  things  one  reads  about  in  novels!" 

Elsie  smiled  a  more  sober  smile  of  maturer  appreciation.. 
"Hugh's  always  so,"  she  answered,  with  proprietary  pride 
in  her  manly  and  handsome  and  chivalrous  cousin.  "He 
invariable  does  just  the  right  thing  at  just  the  right 
moment ;  it's  a  way  he  has.  Nobody  else  has  such  splendid 
manners.  He's  the  dearest,  nicest,  kindest-hearted  fel- 
low  "  She  checked  herself  suddenly,  with  a  flushed 

face,  for  she  felt  her  own  transports  needed  moderating 
now,  and  her  praise  was  getting  perhaps  somewhat  be- 
yond the  limits  of  due  laudation  as  expected  from  cousins. 
A  governess,  even  when  she  comes  from  Girton,  must 
rise,  like  Caesar's  wife,  above  suspicion.  It  must  be  gen- 
erally understood  in  her  employer's  family,  that,  though 
apparently  possessed  of  a  circulating  fluid  like  other 
people's,  she  carries  no  such  compromising  and  damaging 
an  article  as  a  heart  about  with  her.  And  yet,  if,  as  some- 
body once  observed,  there's  "a  deal  of  human  nature  in 
man,"  is  it  not  perhaps  just  equally  true  that  there's  a 
deal  of  the  self-same  perilous  commodity  in  woman  also? 

The  men  made  their  way  ipstream  to  Whitestrand, 
and  landed  at  last,  with  an  easy  run,  beside  the  little  hithe. 
At  the  village  inn — the  Fisherman's  Rest,  by  W.  Stanna- 
way — Hugh  Massinger,  in  spite  of  his  disreputable  damp- 
ness, soon  obtained  comfortable  board  and  lodging,  on 
Warren  Relf's  recommendation.  Relf  was  in  the  habit 
of  coming  to  Whitestrand  frequently,  and  was  "well- 
beknown,"  as  the  landlord  remarked,  to  the  entire  village, 
children  included,  so  that  any  of  his  friends  were  imme- 
diately welcome  at  the  quaint  old  public-house  by  the 
water's  edge.  For  his  own  part  the  painter  preferred  the 
freedom  of  the  yawl,  where  he  paid  of  course  neither  rent 
nor  taxes,  and  came  and  went  at  his  own  free-will ;  but  as 
Massinger,  not  being  a  "vagrom  man,"  meant  to  spend 
his  entire  summer  holiday  in  harness  at  Whitestrand,  he 


34  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

desired  to  have  some  more  settled  pied-a-terre  for  his 
literary  labors  than  the  errant  "Mud-Turtle." 

"I'll  change  my  clothes  in  a  jiffy,"  the  poet  cried  to  his 
friend  as  he  leapt  ashore,  "and  be  back  with  you  at  once, 
a  new  creature. — Relf,  you'll  stop  and  have  some  lunch, 
of  course. — Landlord,  we'd  like  a  nice  tender  steak — you 
can  raise  a  steak  at  Whitestrand,  I  suppose? — That's  well. 
Underdone,  if  you  please. — Just  hand  me  out  my  port- 
manteau there. — Thank  you,  thank  you."  And  with  a 
graceful  bound,  lie  was  off  to  his  room — a  low-roofed  old 
chamber  on  the  ground-floor — as  airy  and  easy  as  if  noth- 
ing had  ever  occurred  at  all  to  ruffle  his  temper  or  disturb 
the  affectedly  careless  set  of  his  immaculate  collar  and  his 
loosely  knotted  necktie. 

In  ten  minutes  he  emerged  again,  as  he  had  predicted, 
in  the  front  room,  another  man — an  avatar  of  glory — 
resplendent  in  a  light-brown  velveteen  coat  and  Rem- 
brandt cap,  that  served  still  more  obviously  than  ever  to 
emphasize  the  full  nature  and  extent  of  his  poetical  pre- 
tensions. It  was  a  coat  that  a  laureate  might  have  envied 
and  dreamt  about.  The  man  who  could  carry  such  a 
coat  as  that  could  surely  have  written  the  whole  of  the 
"Divina  Commedia"  before  breakfast,  and  tossed  off  a 
book  or  two  of  "Paradise  Lost"  in  a  brief  interval  of 
morning  leisure. 

"Awfully  pretty  girl  that!"  he  said  as  he  entered,  and 
drummed  on  the  table  with  impatient  forefinger  for  the 
expected  steak; — "the  little  one,  I  mean,  of  course — not 
my  cousin.  Fair,  too.  In  some  ways  I  prefer  them  fair. 
Though  dark  girls  have  more  go  in  them,  after  all,  I 
fancy;  for  dark  and  true  and  tender  is  the  North,  accord- 
ing to  Tennyson.  But  fair  or  dark,  North  or  South,  like 
Horniman's  teas,  they're  'all  good  alike/  if  you  take 
them  as  assorted.  And  she's  charmingly  fresh  and  youth- 
ful and  naive." 

"She's  pretty,  certainly,"  Warren  Relf  replied,  with  a 
certain  amount  of  unusual  stiffness  apparent  in  his  manner; 
"but  not  anything  like  so  pretty,  to  my  mind,  or  so  grace- 
ful, either,  as  your  cousin,  Miss  Challoner." 

"Oh,  Elsie's  well  enough  in  hef  own  way,  no  doubt," 
Hugh  went  on,  with  a  smile  of  expansive  admiration. 


BURIDAN'S  ASS.  35 

"I  like  them  all  in  their  own  way.  I'm  nothing,  indeed, 
if  not  catholic  and  eclectic.  On  the  whole,  one  girl's  much 
the  same  as  another,  if  only  she  gives  you  the  true  poetic 
thrill.  As  Alfred  de  Musset  calmly  puts  it,  with  delicious 
French  bluntness,  'Qu'importe  le  goblet  pourvu  qu'on  a 
1'ivresse?'  Do  you  remember  that  delightful  student 
song  of  Blackie's? — 

"  'I  can  like  a  hundred  women; 

I  can  love  a  score; 
Only   one   with   heart's   devotion 
Worship  and  adore.' 

I  subscribe  to  that:  all  but  the  last  two  verses;  about 
those  I'm  not  quite  so  certain.  As  to  loving  a  score,  I've 
tried  it  experimentally,  and  I  know  I  can  manage  it.  But 
anyway,  Elsie's  extremely  pretty.  I've  always  allowed 
she's  extremely  pretty.  The  trouble  of  it  is  that  she  hasn't, 
unfortunately,  got  a  brass  farthing.  Not  a  sou,  not  a  cent, 
not  a  dot,  not  a  stiver.  I  don't  myself  know  the  precise 
exchange  value  of  doits  and  stivers,  but  I  take  them  to  be 
something  exceptionally  fractional.  I  could  rhyme  away 
(without  prejudice)  to  Elsie  an  Chelsea  and  braes  of  Kelsie, 
or  even  at  a  pinch  could  bring  in  Selsey — you  must  know 
Selsey  Bill,  as  you  go  in  for  yachting — if  it  weren't  that 
I  feel  how  utterly  futile  and  purposeless  it  all  is  when  a 
girl's  fortune  consists  altogether  of  a  negative  quantity 
in  doits  and  stivers.  But  the  other — Miss  Meysey,  now — 
who's  she,  I  wonder? — Good  name,  Meysey.  It  sounds 
like  money,  and  it  suggests  daisy.  There  was  a  Meysey 
a  banker  in  the  Strand,  you  know — not  very  daisy-like, 
that,  is  it? — and  another  who  did  something  big  in  a  legal 
way — a  judge,  I  fancy. — He  doubtless  sat  on  the  royal 
bench  of  British  Themis  with  immense  applause  (which 
was  instantly  suppressed),  and  left  his  family  a  pot  of 
money.  Meysey — lazy — crazy — hazy.  None  of  them'll 
do,  you  see,  for  a  sonnet  but  daisy.  How  many  more 
Miss  Meysey s  are  there,  if  any?  I  wonder.  And  if  not, 
has  she  got  a  brother?  So  pretty  a  girl  deserves  to  have 
tin.  If  I  were  a  childless,  rich  old  man,  I  think  I'd  incon- 
tinently establish  and  endow  her,  just  to  improve  the 
beauty  and  future  of  the  race,  on  the  strictest  evolutionary 
and  Darwinian  principles." 


36  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

"Her  father's  the  Squire  here,"  Warren  Relf  replied, 
with  a  somewhat  uneasy  glance  at  Hugh,  shot  sideways. 
"He  lords  the  manor  and  a  great  part  of  the  parish. 
Wyville  Meysey's  his  full  name.  He's  rich,  they  say, 
tolerably  rich  still;  though  a  big  slice  of  the  estate  south 
of  the  river  has  been  swallowed  up  by  the  sea,  or  buried 
in  the  sand,  or  otherwise  disposed  of.  The  sea's  encroach  - 
ing  greatly  on  this  coast,  you  know;  some  places,  like 
Dunwich,  have  almost  all  toppled  over  bodily  into  the 
water,  churches  included;  while  in  others  the  shifting  sand 
of  the  country  has  just  marched  over  the  ground  like  a  con- 
quering army,  pitching  its  tent  and  taking  up  its  quarters, 
to  stay,  in  the  meadows.  Old  Meysey's  lost  a 'lot  of  land 
that  way,  I  believe,  on  the  south  side;  it's  covered  by 
those  pretty  little  wave-like  sandhills  you  see  over  yonder. 
But  north  of  the  river  they  say  he's  all  right.  That's  his 
place,  the  house  in  the  fields,  just  up  beyond  the  poplar. 
I  dare  say  you  didn't  notice  it  as  we  passed,  for  it's  built 
low — Elizabethan,  half  hidden  in  the  trees.  All  the  big 
houses  along  the  East  coast  are  always  planned  rather 
squat  and  flat,  to  escape  the  wind,  which  runs  riot  here  in  the 
winter,  the  natives  say,  as  if  it  blew  out  of  the  devil's 
bellows!  But  it's  a  fine  place,  the  Hall,  for  all  that,  as 
places  go,  down  here  in  Suffolk.  The  old  gentleman's 
connected  with  the  bankers  in  the  Strand — some  sort  of 
a  cousin  or  other,  more  or  less  distantly  removed,  I  fancy." 

"And  the  sons?"  Hugh  asked,  with  evident  interest, 
tracking  the  subject  to  its  solid  kernel. 

"The  sons?  There  are  none.  They  had  one  once,  I 
believe — a  dragoon  or  hussar — but  he  was  shot,  out  sol- 
diering in  Zulu-land  or  somewhere;  and  this  daughter's 
now  the  sole  living  representative  of  the  entire  family." 

"So  she's  an  heiress?"  Hugh  inquired,  getting  warmer 
at  last,  as  children  say  at  Hide-and-seek. 

"Ye-es.  In  her  way — no  doubt,  an  heiress. — Not  a  very 
big  one,  I  suppose,  but  still  what  one  might  fairly  call  an 
heiress.  She'll  have  whatever's  left  to  inherit. — You  seern 
very  anxious  to  know  all  about  her." 

"Oh,  one  naturally  likes  to  know  where  one  stands — 
before  committing  one's  self  to  anything  foolish,"  Hugh 
murmured  placidly.  "And  in  this  wicked  world  of  oum, 


BURIDAN'S  ASS.  87 

where  heiresses  are  scarce — and  actions  for  breach  of 
promise  painfully  common — one  never  knows  before- 
hand where  a  single  false  step  may  happen  to  land  one. 
I've  made  mistakes  before  now  in  my  life;  I  don't  mean  to 
make  another  one  through  insufficient  knowledge,  if  I 
can  help  it." 

He  took  up  a  pen  that  lay  upon  the  table  of  the  little 
sitting-room  before  him,  and  began  drawing  idly  with  it 
some  curious  characters  on  the  back  of  an  envelope  he 
pulled  from  his  pocket.  Relf  sat  and  watched  him  in 
silence. 

Presently,  Massinger  began  again.  "You're  very  much 
shocked  at  my  sentiments,  I  can  see,"  he  said  quietly, 
as  he  glanced  with  approval  at  his  careless  hieroglyphics. 

Relf  drew  his  hand  over  his  beard  twice.  "Not  so  much 
shocked  as  grieved,  I  think,"  he  replied  after  a  moment's 
pause. 

"Why  grieved?" 

"Well,  because,  Massinger,  it  was  impossible  for  any 
cne  who  saw  her  this  morning  to  doubt  that  Miss  Chal- 
loner  is  really  in  love  with  you." 

Hugh  went  on  fiddling  with  the  pen  and  ink  and  the 
envelope  nervously.  "You  think  so?"  he  asked,  with  some 
eagerness  in  his  voice,  after  another  short  pause.  "Y»ou 
think  she  really  likes  me?" 

"I  don't  merely  think  so,"  Relf  answered  with  con- 
fidence; "I'm  absolutely  certain  of  it — as  sure  as  1  ever 
was  of  anything.  Remember,  I'm  a  painter,  and  I  have 
a  quick  eye.  She  was  deeply  moved  when  she  saw  you 
come.  It  meant  a  great  deal  to  her. — I  should  be  sorry 
to  think  you  would  play  fast  and  loose  with  any  girl's 
affections." 

"It's  not  the  girl's  affections  I  play  fast  and  loose  with," 
Massinger  retorted  lazily.  "I  deeply  regret  to  say  it's 
very  much  more  my  own  I  trifle  with.  I'm  not  a  fool; 
but  my  one  weak  point  is  a  too  susceptible  disposition. 
I  can't  help  falling  in  love — really  in  love — not  merely 
flirting — with  any  nice  girl  I  happen  to  be  thrown  in 
with.  I  write  her  a  great  many  pretty  verses;  I  send  her 
a  great  many  charming  notes;  I  say  a  great  many  foolish 
things  to  her;  and  at  the  time  I  really  mean  them  all.  My 


88  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

heart  is  just  at  that  precise  moment  the  theater  of  a  most 
agreeable  and  unaffected  flutter.  I  think  to  myself,  This 
time  it's  serious.'  I  look  .at  the  moon,  and  feel  sentimen- 
tal. I  apostrophize  the  fountains,  meadows,  valleys,  hills, 
and  groves  to  forebode  not  any  severing  of  our  loves. 
And  then  I  go  away  and  reflect  calmly,  in  the  solitude  of 
my  own  chamber,  what  a  precious  fool  I've  been — for,  of 
course,  the  girl's  always  a  penniless  one — I've  never  had 
the  luck  or  the  art  yet  to  captivate  an  heiress;  and  when 
it  comes  to  breaking  it  all  off,  I  assure  you  it  costs  me  a 
severe  wrench,  a  wrench  that  I  wish  I  was  sensible  enough 
to  foresee  or  adequately  to  guard  against,  on  the  preven- 
tion-better-than-cure  principle." 

"And  the  girl?"  Relf  asked,  with  a  growing  sense  of 
profound  discomfort,  for  Elsie's  face  and  manner  had 
instantly  touched  him. 

"The  girl,"  Massinger  replied,  putting  a  finishing  stroke 
or  two  to  the  queer  formless  sketch  he  had  scrawled  upon 
the  envelope,  and  fixing  it  up  on  the  frame  of  a  cheap 
lithograph  that  hung  from  a  nail  upon  the  wall  opposite ; 
"well,  the  girl  probably  regrets  it  also,  though  not,  I 
sincerely  trust,  so  profoundly  as  I  do.  In  this  case,  how- 
ever, it's  a  comfort  to  think  Elsie's  only  a  cousin.  Between 
cousins  there  can  be  no  harm,  you  will  readily  admit,  in 
a  little  innocent  flirtation." 

"It's  more  than  a  flirtation  to  her,  I'm  sure,"  Relf 
answered,  with  a  dubious  shake  of  the  head.  "She  takes 
it  all  au  grand  scrieux. — I  hope  you  don't  mean  to  give 
her  one  of  these  horrid  wrenches  you  talk  so  lightly  about? 
—Why,  Massinger,  what  on  earth  is  this?  I — I  didn't 
know  you  could  do  this  sort  of  thing!" 

He  had  walked  across  carelessly,  as  he  paced  the  room, 
to  the  lithograph  in  whose  frame  the  poet  had  slipped 
the  back  of  his  envelope,  and  he  was  regarding  the  little 
addition  now  with  eyes  of  profound  astonishment  and 
The  picture  was  a  coarsely  executed  portrait 
of  a  distinguished  statesman,  reduced  to  his  shirt-sleeves, 
and  caught  in  the  very  act  of  felling  a  tree;  and  on  the 
scrap  of  envelope,  in  exact  imitation  of  the  right  honor- 
able gentleman's  own  familiar  signature,  Hugh  had  writ- 


BURIDAN'S  ASS.  39 

ten  in  bold  free  letters  the  striking  inscription,  "W.  E. 
Gladstone." 

The  poet  laughed.  "Yes,  it's  not  so  bad,"  he  said, 
regarding  it  from  one  side  with  parental  fondness.  "I 
thought  they'd  probably  like  to  have  the  Grand  Old 
Man's  own  genuine  autograph;  so  I've  turned  one  out  for 
them  offhand,  as  good  as  real,  and  twice  as  legible.  I 
flatter  myself  it's  a  decent  copy.  I  can  imitate  anybody's 
hand  at  sight. — Look  here,  for  example;  here's  your 
own."  And  taking  another  scrap  of  paper  from  a  bundle 
in  his  pocket,  he  wrote  with  rapid  and  practiced  mastery, 
"Warren  H.  Relf,"  on  a  corner  of  the  sheet  in  the  precise 
likeness  of  the  painter's  own  large  and  flowing  hand- 
writing. 

Relf  gazed  over  his  shoulder  in  some  surprise,  not 
wholly  unmingled  with  a  faint  touch  of  alarm.  "I'm  an 
artist,  Massinger,"  he  said  slowly,  as  he  scanned  it  close; 
"but  I  couldn't  do  that,  no,  not  if  you  were  to  pay  me  for 
it.  I  could  paint  anything  you  chose  to  set  me,  in 
heaven  above,  or  earth  beneath,  or  the  waters  that  are 
under  the  earth;  but  I  couldn't  make  a  decent  facsimile 
of  another  man's  autograph. — And,  do  you  know,  on  the 
whole,  I'm  awfully  glad  that  I  could  never  possibly  learn 
to  do  it." 

Massinger  smiled  a  languid  smile.  "In  the  hands  of 
the  foolish,"  he  said,  addressing  his  soul  to  the  beefsteak 
which  had  at  last  arrived,  "no  doubt  such  abilities  are  liable 
to  serious  abuse.  But  the  wise  man  is  an  exception  to  all 
rules  of  life:  he  can  safely  be  trusted  with  edge-tools. 
We  do  well  in  refusing  firearms  to  children :  grown  people 
can  employ  them  properly.  I'm  never  afraid  of  any  fac- 
ulty or  knowledge  on  earth  I  possess.  I  know  seventeen 
distinct  ways  of  cheating  at  loo,  without  the  possibilty  of 
a  moment's  detection,  and  yet  that  doesn't  prevent  me, 
whenever  I  play,  from  being  most  confoundedly  out  of 
pocket  by  it.  The  man  who  distrusts  himself  must  be 
conscious  of  weakness.  Depend  upon  it,  no  amount  of 
knowledge  ever  hurts  those  who  repose  implicit  confi- 
dence in  their  own  prudence  and  their  own  sagacity." 


40 


CHAPTER  V. 

ELECTIVE  AFFINITIES. 

The  Girton  governess  of  these  latter  days  stands  on  a 
very  different  footing  indeed  in  the  family  from  the  forty- 
pound-a-year-and-all-found  young  person  who  instructed 
youth  as  a  final  bid  for  life  in  the  last  generation.  She 
ranks,  in  fact,  in  the  unwritten  table  of  precedence  with  the 
tutor  who  has  been  a  university  man ;  and,  as  the  outward 
and  visible  sign  of  her  superior  position,  she  dines  with  the 
rest  of  the  household  at  seven-thirty,  instead  of  taking  an 
early  dinner  in  the  schoolroom  with  her  junior  pupils 
off  hashed  mutton  and  rice-pudding  at  half-past  one.  Elsie 
Challoner  had  been  a  Girton  girl.  She  was  an  orphan, 
left  with  little  in  the  world  but  her  brains  and  her  good- 
looks  to  found  her  fortune  upon;  and  she  had  wisely 
invested  her  whole  capital  in  getting  herself  an  education 
which  would  enable  her  to  earn  herself  in  after  life  a 
moderate  livelihood.  In  the  family  at  Whitestrand,  where 
she  had  lately  come,  she  lived  far  more  like  a  friend  than 
a  governess;  the  difference  in  years  between  herself 
and  Winifred  was  not  extreme;  and  the  two  girls,  taking 
a  fancy  to  one  another  from  the  very  first,  became  com- 
panions at  once,  so  intimate  together  that  Elsie  could 
hardly  with  an  effort  now  and  again  bring  herself  to  exert 
a  little  brief  authority  over  the  minor  details  of  Winifred's 
conduct.  And,  indeed,  the  modern  governess,  though 
still  debarred  the  possession  of  a  heart,  is  now  no  longer 
exactly  expected  to  prove  herself  in  everything  a  moral 
dragon:  she  is  permitted  to  recognize  the  existence  of 
human  instincts  in  the  world  we  inhabit,  and  not  even 
forbidden  to  concede  at  times  the  abstract  possibility  that 
either  she  or  her  pupils  might  conceivably  get  married  to 
an  eligible  person,  should  the  eligible  person  at  the  right 
moment  chance  to  present  himself,  with  the  customary 
credentials  as  to  position  and  prospects. 

"I  wonder,  Elsie,"  Winifred  said,  after  lunch,  "whether 
yojur  cousin  will  really  come  up  this  afternoon?  Perhaps 
he  won't  now,  after  that  dreadful  wetting.  I  dare  say,  as 
he  only  came  down  in  the  yawl,  he  hasn't  got  another  suit 


ELECTIVE  AFFINITIES.  41 

of  clothes  with  him.  I  shouldn't  be  surprised  if  he  had  to 
go  to  bed  at  the  inn,  as  Mr.  Relf  does,  while  they  dry  his 
things  for  him  by  the  kitchen  fire !  Mr.  Relf  never  brings 
more,  they  say,  than  his  one  blue  jersey." 

"That's  not  like  Hugh,"  Elsie  answered  confidently. 
''Hugh  wouldn't  go  anywhere,  by  sea  or  land,  without 
proper  clothes  for  every  possible  civilized  contingency. 
He's  not  a  fop,  you  know — he's  a  man  all  over — but  he 
dresses  nicely  and  appropriately  always.  You  should  just 
see  him  in  evening  clothes;  he's  simply  beautiful  then. 
They  suit  him  splendidly." 

"So  I  should  think,  dear,"  Winifred  answered  with 
warmth. — "I  wonder,  Elsie,  whether  papa  and  mamma 
will  like  your  cousin?" 

"It's  awfully  good  of  you,  darling,  to  think  so  much  of 
what  sort  of  reception  my  cousin  gets,"  Elsie  replied,  with 
a  kiss,  in  perfect  innocence.  (Winifred  blushed  faintly.) 
"But,  of  course,  your  papa  and  mamma  are  sure  to  like 
him.  Everybody  always  does  like  Hugh.  There's  some- 
thing about  him  that  insures  success.  He's  a  universal 
favorite,  wherever  he  goes.  He's  so  clever  and  so  nice, 
and*  so  kind  and  so  sympathetic.  I  never  met  anybody  else 
so  sympathetic  as  Hugh.  He  knows  exactly  beforehand 
how  one  feels  about  everything,  and  makes  allowances  so 
cordially  for  all  one's  little  private  sentiments.  I  suppose 
that's  the  poetic  temperament  in  him.  Poetry  must  mean 
at  bottom,  I  should  think,  keen  insight  into  the  emotions 
of  others." 

"But  not  always  power  of  responding  sympathetically 
to  those  emotions. — Look,  for  example,  at  such  a  case  as 
Goethe's,"  a  clear  voice  said  from  the  other  side  of  the 
hedge.  They  were  walking  along,  as  they  often  walked, 
with  arms  clasped  round  one  another's  waists,  just  inside 
the  grounds,  close  to  the  footpath  that  led  across  the 
fields;  and  only  a  high  fence  of  privet  and  dog-rose  sepa- 
rated their  confidences  from  the  ear  of  the  fortuitous  public 
on  the  adjoining  footpath.  So  Hugh  had  come  up,  una- 
wares from  behind,  and  overheard  their  confidential  chit- 
chat! How  far  back  had  he  overheard?  Elsie  wondered 
to  herself.  If  he  had  caught  it  all,  she  would  be  so 
ashamed  of  herself! 


42  THIS  MORTAL  COIL.        . ' 

"Hugh!"  she  cried,  running  on  to  the  little  wicket  gate 
to  meet  him.  "I'm  so  glad  you've  come.  It*s  delightful 
to  see  you.  But  oh,  you  must  have  thought  us  two  dread- 
ful little  sillies. — How  much  of  our  conversation  did  you 
catch, 'I  wonder?" 

"Only  the  last  sentence,"  Hugh  answered  lightly,  taking 
both  her  hands  in  his  and  kissing  her  a  quiet  cousinly  kiss 
on  her  smooth  broad  forehead.  "Just  that  about  poetry 
meaning  keen  insight  into  the  emotions  of  others;  so,  if 
you  were  saying  any  ill  about  me,  my  child,  or  bearing 
false  witness  against  your  neighbor,  you  may  rest  assured 
at  any  rate  that  I  didn't  hear  it. — Good-morning,  Miss 
Meysey.  I'm  recovered,  you  see:  dried  and  clothed  in  my 
right  mind — at  least,  I  hope  so.  I  trust  the  hat  is  the  same 
also." 

\Yinifred  held  out  a  tiny  small  hand.  "It's  all  right, 
thank  you,"  she  said,  with  a  sudden  flush:  "but  I  shall 
never,  never  wear  it  again,  for  all  that.  I  couldn't  bear  to. 
I  don't  think  you  ought  to  have  risked  your  life  for  so  very 
little." 

"A  life's  worth  nothing  where  a  lady's  concerned," 
Hugh  answered  airily,  with  a  mock  bow.  "But  indeed 
you  give  me  credit  for  too  much  gallantry.  My  life  was 
not  in  the  question  at  all;  I  only  risked  a  delightful  bath, 
which  was  somewhat  impeded  by  an  unnecessarily  heavy 
and  awkward  bathing-dress. — What  a  sweet  place  this  is, 
Elsie;  so  flowery  and  bowery,  when  you  get  inside  it. 
The  little  lane  with  the  roses  overhead  seems  created 
after  designs  by  Birket  Foster.  From  outside,  I  confess, 
to  a  casual  observer  the  first  glimpse  of  East  Anglian 
scenery  is  by  no  means  reassuring." 

They  strolled  up  slowly  together  to  the  Hall  door, 
where  the  senior  branches  were  seated  on  the  lawn,  under 
the  shade  of  the  one  big  spreading  lime-tree,  enjoying  the 
delicious  coolness  of  the  breeze  as  it  blew  in  fresh  from  the 
open  ocean.  Elsie  wondered  how  Hugh  and  the  Squire 
would  get  on  together;  but  her  wonder  indeed  was  little 
needed ;  for  Hugh,  as  she  had  said,  always  got  on  admir- 
ably with  everybody  everywhere.  He  had  a  way  of  attack- 
ing people  instinctively  on  their  strong  point;  and  in  ten 
minutes,  he  and  the  Squire  were  fast  friends,  united  by 


ELECTIVE  AFFINITIES.  43 

firm  ties  of  common  loves  and  common  animosities.  They 
were  both  Oxford  men — at  whatever  yawning  interval  of 
time,  that  friendly  link  forms  always  a  solid  bond  of  union 
between  youth  and  age;  and  both  had  been  at  the  same 
college,  Oriel.  "I  dare  say  you  know  my  old  rooms,"  the 
Squire  observed,  with  a  meditative  sigh.  "They  looked 
out  over  Fellows'  Quad,  and  had  a  rhyming  Latin  hexam- 
eter on  a  pane  of  stained  glass  in  one  of  the  bay  windows." 

"I  know  them  well,"  Hugh  answered,  with  a  rising 
smile  of  genuine  pleasure — for  he  loved  Oxford  with  a 
love  passing  the  love  of  her  ordinary  children.  "A  friend 
of  mine  had  them  in  my  time.  And  I  remember  the  line: 
'Oxoniam  quare  venisti  premeditare.'  An  excellent  leo- 
nine, as  leonines  go,  though  limp  in  its  quantity. — Do  you 
know,  I  fell  in  love  with  that  pane  so  greatly,  that  I  had  a 
wire  framework  made  to  put  over  it,  for  fear  some  fellows 
should  smash  it  some  night,  flinging  about  oranges  at 
a  noisy  wine-party." 

From  Oxford,  they  soon  got  off  upon  Suffolk,  and  the 
encroachment  of  the  sea,  and  the  blown  sands;  and  then 
the  Squire  insisted  upon  taking  Hugh  for  a  tour  du 
proprietarie  round  the  whole  estate,  with  running  com- 
ments upon  the  wasting  of  the  foreshore  and  the  abomin- 
able remissness  of  the  Board  of  Admiralty  in  not  erecting 
proper  groins  to  protect  the  interests  of  coastwise  pro- 
prietors. Hugh  listened  to  it  all  with  his  grave  face  of 
profound  sympathy  and  lively  interest,  putting  in  from 
time  to  time  an  acquiescent  remark  confirmatory  of  the 
wickedness  of  government  officials  in  general,  and  of  the 
delinquent  Board  of  Admiralty  in  particular. 

"Eolian  sands!"  he  said  once,  with  a  lingering  cadence, 
rolling  the  words  on  his  tongue,  as  the  Squire  paused  by 
the  big  poplar  of  that  morning's  adventure  to  point  him 
out  the  blown  dunes  on  the  opposite  shore — "Eolian 
sands!  Is  that  what  they  call  them?  How  very  poetical! 
What  a  lovely  word  to  put  in  a  sonnet!  Eolian — just  the 
very  thing  of  all  others  to  go  on  all-fours  with  an  adjective 
like  Tmolian? — So  it  swallowed  up  forty  acres  of  prime 
salt-marsh  pasture — did  it  really?  That  must  have  been  a 
very  serious  loss  indeed.  Forty  acres  of  prime  salt-marsh! 
I  suppose  it  was  a  sort  of  land  covered  with  tall  rank  reedy 


44  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

grasses,  where  you  feed  those  magnificent  rough-coated, 
long-horned,  Highland-looking  cattle  we  saw  this  morn- 
ing? Splendid  beasts:  most  picturesque  and  regal.  'Bulls 
that  walk  the  pastures  in  kingly  flashing  coats,'  George 
Meredith  would  call  them.  We  passed  a  lot  of  them  as  we 
cruised  upstream  to-day  to  Whitestrand. — And  the  sand 
has  absolutely  overwhelmed  and  wasted  it  all?  Dear  me! 
dear  me!  What  a  terrible  calamity!  It  was  the  Admir- 
alty's fault!  Might  make  a  capital  article  out  of  that  to 
bully  the  government  in  the  'Morning  Telephone.' " 

"If  you  did,  my  dear  sir,"  the  Squire  said  warmly,  with 
an  appreciative  nod,  "you'd  earn  the  deepest  gratitude  of 
every  owner  of  property  in  the  county  of  Suffolk,  and 
indeed  along  the  whole  neglected  East  coast.  The  way 
we've  been  treated  and  abused,  I  assure  you,  has  been 
just  scandalous — simply  scandalous.  Governments,  buff 
or  blue,  have  all  alike  behaved  to  us  with  incredible  levity. 
When  the  present  disgraceful  administration,  for  example, 
came  into  power " 

Hugh  never  heard  the  remainder  of  that  impassioned 
harangue,  long  since  delivered  with  profound  gusto  on  a 
dozen  distinct  election  platforms.  He  was  dimly  aware 
of  the  Squire's  voice,  pouring  forth  denunciation  of  the 
powers  that  be  in  strident  tones  and  measured  sentences ; 
but  he  didn't  listen;  his  soul  was  occupied  in  two  other 
far  more  congenial  pursuits :  one  of  them,  watching  Elsie 
and  Winifred  with  Mrs.  Meysey;  the  other,  trying  to  find 
a  practical  use  for  Eolian  sands  in  connection  with  his 
latest  projected  heroic  poem  on  the  Burial  of  Alaric. 
Eolian;  dashes:  Tmolian;  abashes:  not  a  bad  sub- 
stratum, that,  he  flattered  himself,  for  the  thunderous  lilt 
of  his  opening  stanza. 

It  was  not  till  the  close  of  the  afternoon,  however,  that 
he  could  snatch  a  few  seconds  alone  with  Elsie.  They 
wandered  off  by  themselves  then,  near  the  water's  edge, 
among  the  thick  shrubbery ;  and  Hugh,  sitting  down  in  a 
retired  spot  under  the  lee  of  a  sheltering  group  of  guelder- 
roses,  took  his  pretty  cousin's  hands  for  a  moment  in  his 
own,  and  looking  down  into  her  great  dark  eyes  with  a 
fond  look,  cried  laughingly,  "Oh,  Elsie,  Elsie,  this  is  just 
what  I've  been  longing  for  all  day  long.  I  thought  I 


ELECTIVE  AFFINITIES.  45 

should  never  manage  to  get  away  from  that  amiable  old 
bore,  with  his  encroachments,  and  his  mandamuses,  and 
his  groins,  and  his  interlocutors.  As  far  as  I  could 
understand  him,  he  wants  to  get  the  Board  of  Admiralty, 
or  the  Court  of  Chancery,  or  somebody  else  high  up  in 
station,  to  issue  instructions  to  the  east  wind  not  to  blow 
Eolian  sands  in  future  over  his  sacred  property.  It's 
too  grotesque:  quite,  quite  too  laughable.  He's  trying 
to  bring  an  action  for  trespass  against  the  German  Ocean. 

'Will  ye  bridle  the  deep  sea  with  reins?   will  ye  chasten  the 

high  sea  with  rods? 
Will  ye  take  her  to  chain  her  with  chains  who  is  older  than 

all  ye  gods?' 

Or  will  you  get  an  injunction  against  her  in  due  form  on 
stamped  paper  from  the  Lord  Chief  Justice  of  England? 
Canute  tried  it  on,  and  found  it  a  failure.  And  all  the 
time,  while  the  good  old  soul  was  moaning  and  droning 
about  his  drowned  land,  there  was  I,  just  sighing  and 
groaning  to  get  away  to  a  convenient  corner  with  a  pretty 
little  cousin  of  mine  with  whom  I  had  urgent  private 
affairs  of  my  own  to  settle. — My  dear  Elsie,  Suffolk  agrees 
with  you.  You're  looking  this  moment  simply  charming." 

"It's  your  own  fault,  Hugh,"  Elsie  answered,  with  a 
blush,  never  heeding  overtly  his  last  strictly  personal 
observation.  "You  shouldn't  make  yourself  so  universally 
delightful.  I'm  sure  I  thought,  by  the  way  you  talked  with 
him,  you  were  absolutely  absorbed  in  the  wasting  of  the 
cliff,  and  personally  affronted  by  the  aggressive  east  wind. 
I  was  just  beginning  to  get  quite  jealous  of  the  encroach- 
ments.— For  you  know,  Hugh,  it's  such  a  real  pleasure 
to  me  always  to  see  you." 

She  spoke  tenderly,  with  the  innocent  openness  of  an 
old  acquaintance;  and  Hugh,  still  holding  her  hand  in 
his  own,  leaned  forward  with  admiration  in  his  sad  dark 
eyes,  and  put  out  his  face  close  to  hers,  as  he  had  always 
done  since  they  were  children  together.  "One  kiss,  Elsie," 
he  said  persuasively. — "Quick,  my  child;  we  may  have 
no  other  chance.  Those  dreadful  old  bores  will  stick  to 
us  like  leeches.  'Gather  ye  roses  while  you  may:  Old 
Time  is  still  a-flying.' " 


46  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

Elsie  drew  back  her  face  half  in  alarm.  "No,  no, 
Hugh,"  she  cried,  struggling  with  him  for  a  second. 
"We're  both  growing  too  old  for  such  nonsense  now. 
Remember,  we've  ceased  long  ago  to  be  children." 

"But  as  a  cousin,  Elsie,"  Hugh  said,  with  a  wistful  look 
that  belied  his  words. 

Elsie  preferred  in  her  own  heart  to  be  kissed  by  Hugh  on 
different  grounds;  but  she  did  not  say  so.  She  held  up 
her  face,  however,  with  a  rather  bad  grace,  and  Hugh 
pressed  it  to  his  own  tenderly.  "That's  paradise,  my  houri,'' 
he  murmured  low,  looking  deep  into  her  beautiful  liquid 
eyes. 

"O  son  of  my  uncle,  that  was  paradise  indeed;  but  that 
was  not  like  a  cousin,"  she  answered,  with  a  faint  attempt 
to  echo  his  playfulness,  as  she  withdrew,  blushing. 

Hugh  laughed,  and  glanced  idly  round  him  with  a  merry 
look  at  the  dancing  water.  "You  may  call  it  what  you 
like,"  he  whispered,  with  a  deep  gaze  into  her  big  dark 
pupils.  "I  don't  care  in  what  capacity  on  earth  you  con- 
sider yourself  kissed,  so  long  as  you  still  permit  me  to  kiss 
you." 

For  ten  minutes  they  sat  there  talking — saying  those 
thousand-and-one  sweet  empty  things  that  young  people 
say  to  one  another  under  such  circumstances — have  not 
we  all  been  young,  and  do  not  we  all  well  know  them? 
— and  then  Elsie  rose  with  a  sigh  of  regret.  "I  think," 
she  said,  liwe  mustn't  stop  here  alone  any  longer;  perhaps 
Mrs.  Meysey  wouldn't  like  it." 

"Oh  bother  Mrs.  Meysey!"  Hugh  cried,  with  an  angry 
sideward  toss  of  his  head.  "These  old  people  are  a  terrible 
nuisance  in  the  world.  I  wish  we  could  get  a  law  passed 
by  a  triumphant  majority  that  at  forty  everybody  was  to 
be  promptly  throttled,  or  at  least  transported.  ^There'd 
be  some  hope  of  a  little  peace  and  enjoyment  in  the  world 
then." 

"Oh,  but,  Hugh,  Mrs.  Meysey's  just  kindness  itself, 
and  I  know  she'll  let  you  come  and  see  me  ever  so  often. 
She  said  at  lunch  I  might  go  out  on  the  water  or  any- 
where I  liked,  whenever  I  choose,  at  any  time  with  my 
cousin." 

"A  very  sensible,  reasonable,  intelligent  old  lady,"  Hugh 


ELECTIVE  AFFINITIES.  47 

answered  approvingly,  with  a  mollified  nod.  "I  wish  they 
were  all  as  wise  in  their  generation.  The  profession  of 
chaperon,  like  most  others,  has  been  overdone,  and  would 
be  all  the  better  now  for  a  short  turn  of  judicious  thinning. 
— But,  Elsie,  you've  told  them  I  was  a  cousin,  I  see. 
That's  quite  right  Have  you  explained  to  them  in  detail 
the  precise  remoteness  of  our  actual  relationship?" 

Elsie's  lip  quivered  visibly.  "No,  Hugh,"  she  answered. 
"But  why?  Does  it  matter?" 

"Not  at  all — not  at  all.  Very  much  the  contrary.  I'm 
glad  you  didn't.  It's  better  so.  If  I  were  you,  my  child, 
I  think,  do  you  know,  I'd  allow  them  to  believe,  in  a  quiet 
sort  of  wray — unless,  of  course,  they  ask  you  point-blank, 
that  you  and  I  are  first  cousins.  It  facilitates  social  inter- 
course considerably.  Cousinhood's  such  a  jolly  indefinite 
thing,  one  may  as  well  enjoy  as  long  as  possible  the  full 
benefit  of  its  charming  vagueness." 

"But,  Hugh,  is  it  right?  Do  you  think  I  ought  to? — I 
mean,  oughtn't  I  to  let  them  know  at  once,  just  for  that 
very  reason,  how  slight  the  relationship  really  is  between 
us?" 

"The  relationship  is  not  slight,"  Hugh  answered  with 
warmth,  darting  an  eloquent  glance  deep  down  into  her 
eyes.  "The  relationship's  a  great  deal  closer,  indeed,  than 
if  it  were  a  much  nearer  one. — That  may  be  par- 
adox, but  its  none  the  less  true,  for  all  that. — Still, 
it's  no  use  arguing  a  point  of  casuistry  with  a  real  live 
Girton  girl.  You  know  as  much  about  ethics  as  I  do, 
and  a  great  deal  more  into  the  bargain.  Only,  a  cousin's 
a  cousin  anyhow;  and  I  for  my  part  wouldn't  go  out  of 
my  way  to  descend  gratuitously  into  minute  genealogical 
particulars  of  once,  twice,  thrice,  or  ten  times  removed, 
out  of  pure  puritanism.  These  questions  of  pedigree  are 
always  tedious.  What  subsists  all  through  is  the  individual 
fact  that  I'm  Hugh,  and  you're  Elsie,  and  that  I  love  you 
dearly — of  course  \vith  a  purely  cousinly  degree  of  devo- 
tion." 

"Hugh,  you  needn't  always  flourish  that  limitation  in 
my  face,  like  a  broomstick." 

"Caution,  my  dear  child — mere  ingrained  caution — the 
solitary  resource  of  poverty  and  wisdom.  What's  the 


48  THIS  MORTAL  COIL* 

good  of  loving  you  dearly  on  any  other  grounds,  I  should 
like  to  know,  as  long  as  poetry,  divine  poetry,  remains  a 
perfect  drug  in  the  publishing  market?  A  man  and  a 
girl  can't  live  on  bread  and  cheese  and  the  domestic 
affections,  can  they,  Elsie?  Very  well,  then,  for  the  present 
we  are  both  free.  If  ever  circumstances  should  turn  out 

differently "    The  remainder  of  that  sentence  assumed 

a  form  inexpressible  by  the  resources  of  printer's  ink, 
even  with  the  aid  of  a  phonetic  spelling. 

When  they  turned  aside  from  the  guelder-roses  at  last 
with  crimson  faces,  they  strolled  side  by  side  up  to  the  ^ 
house  once  more,  talking  about  the  weather  or  some' 
equally  commonplace  and  uninteresting  subject,  and 
joined  the  Meyseys  under  the  big  tree.  The  Squire  had 
disappeared,  and  Winifred  came  out  to  meet  them  on  the 
path.  "Mamma  says,  Mr.  Massinger,"  she  began  timidly, 
"we're  going  a  little  picknicking  all  by  ourselves  on  the 
river  to-morrow— up  among  the  sandhills  papa  was  show- 
ing you.  They're  a  delicious  place  to  picnic  in,  the  sand- 
hills; and  mamma  thinks  perhaps  you  wouldn't  mind 
ccming  to  join  us,  and  bringing  your  friend  the  artist 
with  you.  But  I  dare  say  you  won't  care  to  come :  there'll 
be  only  ourselves — just  a  family  party." 

"My  tastes  are  catholic,"  Hugh  answered  jauntily. 
"I  love  all  innocent  amusements — and  most  wicked  ones. 
There's  nothing  on  earth  I  should  enjoy  as  much  as  a 
picnic  in  the  sandhills. — You'll  be  coming  too,  of  course, 
won't  you,  Elsie? — Very  well,  then.  I'll  bring  Relf,  and 
the  'Mud-Turtle'  to  boot.  I  know  he  wants  to  go  mud- 
painting  himself.  He  may  as  well  take  us  all  up  in  a 
body.'" 

"We  shall  do  nothing,  you  know,"  Winifred  cried  apol- 
ogetically. "We  shall  only  just  sit  on  the  sandhills  and 
talk,  or  pick  yellow  horned-poppies,  and  throw  stones 
into  the  sea,  and  behave  ourselves  generallv  like  a  pack 
of  idlers." 

"That'll  exactly  suit  me,"  Hugh  replied  with  a  smile. 
"My  most  marked  characteristics  are  indolence  and  the 
practice  of  the  Christian  virtues.  I  hate  the  idea  that 
when  people  invite  their  friends  to  a  feast  they're  bound 
to  do  something  or  other  definite  to  amuse  them.  It's  an 


ELECTIVE  AFFINITIES.  49 

insult  to  one's  intelligence ;  it's  degrading  one  to  the  level 
of  innocent  childhood,  which  has  to  be  kept  engaged 
with  Blindman's  Buff  and  an  unlimited  supply  of  Everton 
toffee,  for  fear  it  should  bore  itself  with  its  own  inanity. 
On  that  ground,  I  consider  music  and  games  at  suburban 
parties  the  resource  of  incompetence.  Sensible  people  find 
enough  to  amuse  them  in  one  another's  society,  without 
playing  dumb  crambo  or  asking  riddles.  Relf  and  I  will 
more  than  enough,  I'm  sure,  to-morrow  in  yours  and 
Elsie's." 

He  shook  hands  with  them  all  round  and  raised  his  hat 
in  farewell  with  that  inimitable  grace  which  was  Hugh 
Massinger's  peculiar  property.  When  he  left  the  Hall 
that  afternoon,  he  left  four  separate  conquests  behind 
him.  The  Squire  thought  this  London  newspaper  fellow 
was  a  most  sensible,  right-minded,  intelligent  young  man, 
with  a  head  on  his  shoulders,  and  a  complete  comprehen- 
sion of  the  rights  and  wrongs  of  the  intricate  riparian 
proprietors'  question.  Mrs.  Meysey  though  Elsie's  cousin 
was  most  polite  and  attentive,  as  well  as  an  extremely 
high-principled  and  excellent  person.  (Ladies  of  a  cer- 
tain age  are  always  strong  on  the  matter  of  principles, 
which  they  discuss  as  though  they  were  a  definitely  meas- 
urable quantity,  like  money  or  weight  or  degrees  Fahren- 
heit.) Winifred  thought  Mr.  Massinger  was  a  born  poet, 
and  oh,  so  nice  and  kind  and  appreciative.  Elsie  thought 
her  darling  Hugh  was  just  the  same  good,  sweet,  sympa- 
thetic old  friend  and  ally  and  comforter  as  ever.  And  they 
all  four  united  in  thinking  he  was  very  handsome,  very 
clever,  very  brilliant,  and  very  delightful. 

As  for  Hugh,  he  thought  to  himself  as  he  sauntered 
back  by  the  rose-bordered  lane  to  the  village  inn,  that  the 
Squire  was  a  most  portentous  and  heavy  old  nuisance ;  that 
Mrs.  Wyville  Meysey  was  a  comic  old  creature;  that 
Elsie  was  really  a  most  charming  girl ;  and  that  Winifred, 
in  spite  of  her  bread-and-butter  blushes,  wasn't  half  bad, 
after  all — for  an  heiress. 

The  heiress  is  apt  to  be  plain  and  forbidding.  She  is 
not  fair  to  outward  view,  as  many  maidens  be.  Her  beauty 
has  solid,  not  to  say  strictly  metallic  qualities,  and  resides 


80  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

principally  in  a  safe  at  her  banker's.  To  have  tracked  down 
an  heiress  who  was  also  pretty  was  indeed,  Hugh  felt,  a 
valuable  discovery. 

When  he  reached  the  inn,  he  found  Warren  Relf  just 
returned  from  a  sketching  expedition  up  the  tidal  flats. 
"Well,  Relf,"  he  cried,  "you  see  me  triumphant  I've  been 
reconnoiteringf  Miss  Meysey's  outposts,  with  an  ultimate 
view  to  possible  siege  operations.  To  judge  by  the  first 
results  of  my  reconnoissance,  she  seems  a  very  decent  sort 
of  little  girl  in  her  own  way.  If  sonnets  will  carry  her  by 
storm,  I  don't  mind  discharging  a  few  cartloads  of  them 
from  a  hundred-ton  gun  point-blank  at  her  outworks. 
Most  of  them  can  be  used  again,  of  course,  in  case  of 
need,  in  another  campaign,  if  occasion  offers." 

"And  Miss  Challoner?"  Relf  suggested,  with  some  re- 
proof in  his  tone.  "Was  she  there  too?  Have  you  seen 
her  also?" 

"Yes,  Elsie  was  there,"  the  poet  answered  unconcern- 
edly, as  he  rang  the  bell  for  a  glass  of  soda-water.  "Elsie 
was  there,  looking  as  charming  and  as  piquant  and  as 
pretty  as  ever;  and,  by  Jove!  she's  the  cleverest  and  bright- 
est and  most  amusing  girl  I  ever  met  anywhere  up  and 
down  in  England.  Though  she's  my  own  cousin,  and  it's 
me  that  says  it,  as  oughtn't  to  say  it,  she's  a  credit  to  the 
family.  I  like  Elsie.  At  times,  I've  almost  half  a  mind, 
upon  my  soul,  to  fling  prudence  to  the  winds,  and  ask  her 
to  come  and  accept  a  share  of  my  poor  crust  in  my  humble 
garret. — But  it  won't  do,  you  know — it  won't  do.  Sine 
Cerere  et  Baccho,  friget  Venus.  Either  I  must  make  a 
fortune  at  a  stroke,  or  I  must  marry  a  girl  with  a  fortune 
ready  made  to  my  hand  already.  Love  in  a  cottage  is  all 
very  well  in  its  way,  no  doubt,  with  roses  and  eglantine — • 
whatever  eglantine  may  be — climbing  round  the  windows; 
but  love  in  a  hovel — which  is  the  plain  prose  of  it  in  these 
hard  times — can't  be  considered  either  pretty  or  poetical. 
Unless  some  Columbus  of  a  critic,  cruising  through  reams 
of  minor  verse,  discovers  my  priceless  worth  some  day, 
and  divulges  me  to  the  world,  there's  no  chance  of  my 
ever  being  able  to  afford  anything  so  good  and  sweet  as 
Elsie. — But  the  other  one's  a  nice  small  girl  of  her  sort  too. 


ELECTIVE  AFFINITIES.  61 

I  think  for  my  part  I  shall  alter  and  amend  those  quaint 
little  verses  of  Blagkie's  a  bit — make  'em  run : 

'I  can  like  a  hundred  women; 

I  can  love  a  score; 
Only  with  a  heart's  devotion 

Worship  three  or  four.'  " 

Relf  laughed  merrily  in  spite  of  himself. 

Massinger  went  on  musing  in  an  undertone :  "Not  that 
I  like  the  first  and  third  lines  as  they  stand,  at  all :  a  careful 
versifier  would  have  insisted  upon  rhyming  them.  I  should 
have  made  'devotion'  chime  in  with  'ocean,'  or  'lotion/  or 
'Goshen,'  or  'emotion,'  or  something  of  that  sort,  to  polish 
it  up  a  bit.  There's  very  good  business  to  be  got  out  of 
'emotion,'  if  you  work  it  properly;  but  'ocean'  comes  in 
handy,  too,  down  here  at  Whitestrand.  I'll  dress  it  up 
into  a  bit  of  verse  this  evening,  I  think,  for  Elsie — or  the 
other  girl — Winifred's  her  Christian  name.  Hard  case, 
Winifred.  'Been  afraid'  is  only  worthy  of  Browning, 
who'd  perpetrate  anything  in  the  way  of  a  rhyme  to  save 
himself  trouble.  Has  a  false  Ingoldsby  gallop  of  verse 
about  it  that  I  don't  quite  like.  Winnie's  comparatively 
easy,  of  course :  you've  got  'skinny'  and  'finny,'  and  'Min- 
nie' and  spinny/  But  Winifred's  a  very  hard  case 
indeed.  'Winnie'  and  'guinea'  are  good  enough  rhymes; 
but  not  quite  new :  they've  been  virtually  done  before  by 
Rossetti,  you  know: 

'Lazy,  laughing,  languid  Jenny, 
Fond  of  a  kiss  and  fond  of  a  guinea.' 

But  I  doubt  if  I  could  ever  consent  to  make  love  to  a  girl 
whose  name's  so  utterly  and  atrociously  unmanageable 
as  plain  Winifred. — Now,  Mary — there's  a  name  for  you, 
if  you  like:  with  'fairy'  and  'airy,'  and  'chary'  and  'vagary,' 
and  all  sorts  of  other  jolly  old-world  rhymes  to  go  with 
it.  Or,  if  you  want  to  be  rural,  you  can  bring  in  'dairy' — 
do  the  pretty  milkmaid  business  to  perfection.  But  'Wini- 
fred'— 'bin  afraid' — the  thing's  impossible.  It  compels 
you  to  murder  the  English  language.  Lwouldn't  demean 
myself — or  I  think  it  ought  to  be  by  rights  bemean  myself 


62  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

by  vvriting  verses  to  her  with  such  a  name  as  that. — I 

shall  send  them  to  Elsie,  who,  after  all,  deserves  them 
more,  and  will  be  flattered  with  the  attention  into  the 
bargain." 

At  ten  o'clock,  he  came  out  once  more  from  his  own 
room  to  the  little  parlor,  where  Warren  Relf  was  seated 
''cooking"  a  sky  in  one  of  his  hasty  seaside  sketches.  He 
had  an  envelope  in  his  hand,  and  a  hat  on  his  head. 
"Where  are  you  off?"  Relf  asked  carelessly. 

"Oh,  just  to  the  post,"  Hugh  Massinger  answered,  with 
a  gay  nod.  "I've  finished  my  new  batch  of  verses  on  the 
ocean — emotion — potion— devotion  theme,  and  I'm  send- 
ing them  off,  all  hot  from  the  oven,  to  my  cousin  Elsie. — 
They're  not  bad  in  their  way.  I  like  them  myself.  I  shall 
print  them,  I  think,  in  next  week's  'Athenaeum.' " 


CHAPTER  VI. 

WHICH  LADY? 

Hugh  found  the  day  among  the  sandhills  simply  delight- 
ful. He  had  said  with  truth  he  loved  all  innocent  pleas- 
ures, for  his  was  one  of  those  sunny,  many-sided,  aesthetic 
natures,  in  spite  of  its  underlying  tinge  of  pessimism  and 
sadness,  that  throw  themselves  with  ardor  into  every 
simple  country  delight,  and  find  deep  enjoyment  in  trees 
and  flowers  and  waves  and  scenery,  in  the  scent  of  new- 
mown  hay  and  the  song  of  birds,  and  in  social  intercourse 
with  beautiful  women.  Warren  Relf  had  readily  enough 
fallen  in  with  Hugh's  plan  for  their  day's  outing;  for 
Warren  Relf  in  his  turn  was  human  too,  and  at  a  first 
glance  he  had  been  greatly  taken  with  Hugh's  pretty 
cousin,  the  dark-eyed  Girton  girl.  His  possession  of  the 
"Mud-Turtle"  gave  him  for  the  moment  a  title  to  respect, 
for  a  yacht's  a  yacht,  however  tiny.  So  he  took  them  all 
up  together  in  the  yawl  to  the  foot  of  the  sandhills ;  and 
while  Mrs.  Meysey  and  the  girls  were  unpacking  the 
hampers  and  getting  lunch  ready  on  the  white  slopes  of 
the  drifted  dunes,  he  sat  down  by  the  shore  and  sketched 


WHICH  LADY.  53 

a  little  bit  of  the  river  foreground  that  exactly  suited  his 
own  peculiar  style — an  islet  of  mud,  rising  low  from  the 
bed  of  the  sluggish  stream,  crowned  with  purple  sea-aster 
and  white-flowered  scurvy-grass,  and  backed  by  a  slimy 
bed  of  tidal  ooze,  that  shone  with  glancing  rays  of  gold 
and  crimson  in  the  broad  flood  of  the  reflected  sunlight. 

Elsie  was  very  happy,  too,  in  her  way;  for  had  she  not 
Hugh  all  the  time  by  her  side,  and  was  she  not  wearing  the 
ardent  verses  she  had  received  from  him  by  post  that  very 
morning,  inside  her  dress,  pressed  close  against  her  heart, 
and  rising  and  falling  with  every  pulse  and  flutter  of  her 
bosom?  To  him,  the  handicraftsman,  they  were  a  mere 
matter  of  ocean,  and  potion,  and  lotion,  and  devotion, 
strung  together  on  a  slender  thread  of  pretty  conceit ;  but 
to  her,  in  the  innocent  ecstacy  of  a  first  great  love,  they 
meant  more  than  words  could  possibly  utter. 

She  could  not  thank  him  for  them;  her  pride  and  de- 
light went  too  deep  for  that;  and  even  were  it  otherwise, 
she  had  no  opportunity.  But  once,  while  they  stood  to- 
gether by  the  sounding  sea,  with  Winifred  by  their  side, 
looking  critically  at  the  picture  Warren  Relf  had  sketched 
in  hasty  outline,  and  began  to  color,  she  found  an  occasion 
to  let  the  poet  know,  by  a  graceful  allusion,  she  had  re- 
ceived his  little  tribute  of  verse  in  safety.  As  the  painter 
with  a  few  dainty  strokes  filled  in  the  floating  iridescent 
tints  upon  the  sunlit  ooze,  she  murmured  aloud,  as  if 
quoting  from  some  well-known  poem 

"Red  strands  that  faintly  fleck  and  spot 
The  tawny  flood  thy  banks  enfold; 

A  woof  of  Tyrian  purple,  shot 
Through  cloth  of  gold." 

Hugh  looked  up  at  her  appreciatively  with  a  smile  of 
recognition.  They  were  his  own  verses,  out  of  the  Song 
of  Char  he  had  written  and  posted  to  her  the  night  before. 
"Mere  faint  Swinburnian  echoes,  nothing  worth,"  he  mur- 
mured low  in  a  deprecating  aside;  but  he  was  none  the 
less  flattered  at  the  delicate  attention,  for  all  that.  "And 
how  clever  of  her,  too,"  he  thought  to  himself  with  a 
faint  thrill,  "to  have  pieced  them  in  so  deftly  with  the 
subject  of  the  picture!  After  all,  she's  a  very  intelligent 


54  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

girl,  Elsie!  A  man  might  go  further  and  fair  worse — if  it 
were  not  for  that  negative  quantity  in  doits  and  stivers." 

Warren  Relf  looked  up  also  with  a  quick  glance  at  the 
dark-eyed  girl.  "You're  right,  Miss  Challoner,"  he  said, 
stealing  a  lover's  sidelook  at  the  iridescent  peacock  hues 
upon  the  gleaming  mud.  "It  shines  like  opal.  No 
precious  stone  on  earth  could  be  lovelier  than  that.  Few 
people  have  the  eye  to  see  beauty  in  a  flat  of  tidal  mud 
like  the  one  I'm  painting;  but  cloth  of  gold  and  Tynan 
purple  are  the  only  words  one  could  possibly  find  to  ex- 
press in  fit  language  the  glow  and  glory  of  its  exquisite 
coloring.  If  only  I  could  put  it  on  canvas  now,  as  you've 
put  it  in  words,  even  the  Hanging  Committee  of  the 
Academy,  I  believe — hard-hearted  monsters — would 
scarcely  be  stony  enough  to  dream  of  rejecting  it." 

Elsie  smiled.  How  every  man  reads  things  his  own 
way,  by  the  light  of  his  own  personal  interests!  Hugh 
had  seen  she  was  trying  to  thank  him  unobtrusively  for 
his  copy  of  verses;  Warren  Relf  had  only  found  in  her 
apt  quotation  a  passing  criticism  on  his  own  little  water- 
color. 

After  lunch,  the  two  seniors,  the  Squire  and  Mrs.  Mey- 
sey,  manifested  the  distinct  desire  of  middle  age  for  a 
quiet  digestion  in  the  shade  of  the  sandhills ;  and  the  four 
younger  folks,  nothing  loth  to  be  free,  wandered  off  in 
pairs  at  their  own  sweet  will  along  the  bank  of  the  river. 
Hugh  took  Elsie  for  his  companion  at  first,  while  \Varren 
Relf  had  to  put  himself  off  for  the  time  being  with  the  blue- 
eyed  Winifred.  Now  Relf  hated  blue  eyes.  "But  we  must 
arrange  it  like  a  set  of  Lancers,"  Hugh  cried  with  an  easy 
flourish  of  his  graceful  hand;  "at  the  end  of  the  figure, 
set  to  corner  and  change  partners."  Elsie  might  have 
felt  half  jealous  for  a  moment  at  this  equitable  suggestion, 
if  Hugh  hadn't  added  to  her  in  a  lower  tone,  and  with  his 
sweetest  smile:  "I  mustn't  monopolize  you  all  the  after- 
noon, you  know,  Elsie;  Relf  must  have  his  innings  too; 
I  can  see  by  his  face  he's  just  dying  to  talk  to  you." 

"I'd  rather  a  great  deal  talk  with  you.  Hugh,"  Elsie 
murmured  gently,  looking  down  at  the  sands  with  an 
apparently  sudden  geological  interest  in  their  minute  com  • 
potion. 


WHICH  LADY.  55 

"I'm  proud  to  hear  it;  so  would  I,"  Hugh  answered 
gallantly.  "But  we  mustn't  be  selfish.  I  hate  selfishness. 
I'll  sacrifice  myself  by-and-by  ort  the  altar  of  fraternity 
to  give  Relf  a  turn  in  due  season.  Meanwhile,  Elsie, 
let's  be  happy  together  while  we  can.  Moments  like  these 
don't  come  to  one  often  in  the  course  of  a  lifetime.  They're 
as  rare  as  rubies  and  as  all  good  things.  When  they  do 
come,  I  prize  them  far  too  much  to  think  of  wasting  them 
in  petty  altercation." 

They  strolled  about  among  the  undulating  dunes  for 
an  hour  or  more,  talking  in  that  vague  emotional  way 
that  young  men  and  maidens  naturally  fall  into  when  they 
walk  together  by  the  shore  of  the  great  deep,  and  each  very 
much  pleased  with  the  other's  society,  as  usually  happens 
under  similar  circumstances.  The  dunes  were  indeed  a 
lovely  place  for  flirting  in,  as  if  made  for  the  purpose — 
high  billowy  hillocks  of  blown  sand,  all  white  and  firm, 
and  rolling  like  chalk  downs,  but  matted  together  under- 
foot with  a  tussocky  network  of  spurges  and  campions 
and  soldanella  convolvulus.  In  the  tiny  combes  and 
valleys  in  between,  where  tall  reed-like  grasses  made  a 
sort  of  petty  imitation  jungle,  you  could  sit  down  unob- 
served under  the  lee  of  some  mimic  range  of  mountains, 
and  take  your  ease  in  an  enchanted  garden,  like  sultans 
and  sultanas  of  the  "Arabian  Nights,"  without  risk  of 
intrusion.  The  sea  tumbled  in  gently  on  one  side  upon  the 
long  white  beach;  the  river  ran  on  the  other  just  within 
the  belt  of  blown  sandhills;  and  wedged  between  the 
two,  in  a  long  line,  the  barrier  ridge  of  miniature  wolds 
stretched  away  for  miles  and  miles  in  long  perspective 
toward  the  southern  horizon.  It  was  a  lotus-eating  place, 
to  lie  down  and  dream  and  make  love  forever.  As  Hugh 
sat  there  idly  with  Elsie  by  his  side  under  the  lee  of  the 
dunes,  he  wondered  the  Squire  could  ever  have  had  the 
bad  taste  to  object  to  the  generous  east  wind  which  was 
overwhelming  his  miserable  utilitarian  salt-marsh  pastures 
with  this  quaint  little  fairyland  of  tiny  knolls  and  Lilipu- 
tian  valleys.  For  his  own  part,  Hugh  was  duly  grateful 
to  that  unconscious  atmospheric  landscape  gardener  for 
his  admirable  additions  to  the  flat  Suffolk  scenery;  he 
wanted  nothing  better  or  sweeter  in  life  than  to  lie  here  for 


56  THIS  MORTAL  COIL,. 

ever  stretched  at  his  ease  in  the  sun,  and  talk  of  poetry 
and  love  with  Elsie. 

At  the  end  of  an  hour,  however,  he  roused  himself 
sturdily.  Life,  says  the  philosopher,  is  not  all  beer  and 
skittles;  nor  is  it  all  poetry  and  dalliance  either.  "Stern 
duty  sways  our  lives  against  our  will,"  say  the  "Echoes 
from  Callimachus."  It's  all  very  well,  at  odd  moments, 
to  sport  with  Amaryllis  in  the  shade,  or  with  the  tangles 
of  Neaera's  hair,  for  a  reasonable  period.  But  if  Amaryllis 
has  no  money  of  her  own,  or  if  Neaera  is  a  penniless  gov- 
erness in  a  country-house,  the  wise  man  must  sacrifice 
sentiment  at  last  to  solid  advantages;  he  must  quit 
Amaryllis  in  search  of  Phyllis,  or  reject  Neaera  in  favir  of 
Vera,  that  opulent  virgin,  who  has  lands  and  houses,  mes- 
suages and  tenements,  stocks  and  shares,  and  is  a  ward 
in  Chancery.  Face  to  face  with  such  a  sad  necessity,  Hugh 
now  found  himself.  He  was  really  grieved  that  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  case  compelled  him  to  tear  himself 
unwillingly  away  from  Elsie;  he  was  so  thoroughly  enjoy- 
ing himself  in  his  own  pet  way;  but  duty,  duty — duty 
before  everything!  The  slave  of  duty  jumped  up  with  a 
start. 

"My  dear  child,"  he  exclaimed,  glancing  hastily  at  his 
watch,  "Relf  will  really  never  forgive  me.  I'm  sure  it's 
time  for  us  to  set  to  corners  and  change  partners.  Not, 
of  course,  that  I  want  to  do  it  myself.  For  two  people 
who  are  not  engaged,  I  think  we've  had  a  very  snug  little 
time  of  it  here  together,  Elsie.  But  a  bargain's  a  bargain, 
and  Relf  must  be  inwardly  grinding  his  teeth  at  me. — Let's 
go  and  meet  them." 

Elsie  rose  more  slowly  and  wistfully.  "I'm  never  so 
happy  anywhere,  Hugh,'"'  she  said  with  a  lingering  ca- 
dence, "as  when  you're  with  me." 

"And  yet  we  are  not  engaged,"  Hugh  went  on  in  a 
meditative  murmur — "we're  not  engaged.  We're  only 
cousins!  For  mere  cousins,  our  cousinly  solicitude  for 
one  another's  welfare  is  truly  touching.  If  all  families 
were  only  as  united  as  ours,  now!  interpreters  of  prophecy 
would  not  have  far  to  seek  for  the  date  of  the  millennium. 
Well,  well,  instructress  of  youth,  we  must  look  out  fa" 
these  other  young  people ;  and  if  I  were  you,  experience 


WHICH  LADY.  67 

would  suggest  to  me  the  desirability  of  not  coming  upon 
them  from  behind  too  unexpectedly  or  abruptly.  A  fel- 
low-feeling makes  us  wondrous  kind.  Relf  is  young,  and 
the  pretty  pupil  is  by  no  means  unattractive." 

"I'd  trust  Winifred  as  implicitly "  Elsie  began,  and 

broke  off  suddenly. 

"As  you'd  trust  yourself,"  Hugh  put  in,  with  a  little 
quiet  irony,  completing  her  sentence.  "No  doubt,  no 
doubt;  I  can  readily  believe  it.  But  even  you  and  I — who 
are  staider  and  older,  and  merely  cousins — wouldn't  have 
cared  to  be  disturbed  too  abruptly  just  now,  you  know, 
when  we  were  pulling  soldanellas  to  pieces  in  concert 
in  the  hollow  down  yonder.  I  shall  climb  to  the  top  of 
the  big  sandhill  there,  and  from  that  specular  mount — 
as  Satan  remarks  in  'Paradise  Regained' — I  shall  spy 
from  afar  where  Relf  has  wandered  off  to  with  the  immac- 
ulate Winifred. — Ah,  there  they  they  are,  over  yonder  by 
the  beach,  looking  for  pebbles  or  something — I  suppose 
amber.  Let's  go  over  to  them,  Elsie,  and  change  partners. 
Common  politeness  compels  one,  of  course,  to  pay  some 
attention  to  one's  host's  daughter." 

As  they  strolled  away  again,  with  a  change  of  partners, 
back  toward  the  spot  where  Mrs.  Meysey  was  somewhat 
anxiously  awaiting  them,  Hugh  and  Winifred  turned 
their  talk  casually  on  Elsie's  manifold  charms  and  excel- 
lences. ''She's  a  sweet,  isn't  she?"  Winifred  cried  to  her 
new  acquaintance  in  enthusiastic  appreciation.  "Did  you 
ever  in  your  life  meet  anybody  like  her?" 

"No,  never,"  Hugh  answered  with  candid  praise.  Can- 
dor was  always  Hugh's  special  cue.  "She's  a  dear,  good 
girl,  and  I  like  her  immensely.  I'm  proud  of  her  too. 
The  only  inheritance  I  ever  received  from  my  family  is 
my  cousinship  to  Elsie;  and  I  duly  prize  it  as  my  sole 
heirloom  from  fifty  generations  of  penniless  Massingers." 

"Then  you're  very  fond  of  her,  Mr.  Massinger?" 

"Yes,  very  fond  of  her.  When  a  man's  only  got  one  rel- 
ative in  the  world,  he  naturally  values  that  unique  pos- 
session far  more  than  those  who  have  a  couple  of  dozen 
or  so  of  all  sexes  and  ages,  assorted.  Some  people  suffer 
from  too  much  family;  my  misfortune  is  that,  being  a 
naturally  affectionate  man,  I  suffer  from  too  little.  It's 


58  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

the  old  case  of  the  one  ewe  lamb;  Elsie  is  to  me  my 
brothers  and  my  sisters,  and  my  cousins  and  my  aunts,  all 
rolled  into  one,  like  the  supers  at  the  theater." 

"And  are  you  and  she "  Winifred  began  timidly. 

All  girls  are  naturally  inquisitive  on  that  important  ques- 
tion. 

Hugh  broke  her  off  with  a  quick,  little  laugh.  "Oh 
dear  no,  nothing  of  the  sort,"  he  answered  hastily,  in  his 
jaunty  way.  "We're  not  engaged,  if  that's  what  you  mean, 
Miss^Meysey;  nor  at  all  likely  to  be.  Our  affection, 
though  profound,  is  of  the  brotherly  and  sisterly  order 
only.  It's  much  nicer  so,  of  course.  When  people  are 
engaged,  they're  always  looking  forward  with  yearning 
and  longing  and  other  unpleasant  internal  feelings,  much 
enlarged  upon  in  Miss  Virginia  Gabriel's  songs,  to  a 
delusive  future.  When  they're  simply  friends,  or  brothers 
and  sisters,  they  can  enjoy  their  friendship  or  their  frater- 
nity in  the  present  tense,  without  forever  gazing  ahead  with 
wistful  eyes  toward  a  distant  and  ever-receding  horizon." 

"But  why  need  it  recede?"  Winifred  asked  innocently. 

"Why  need  it  recede?  Ah,  there  you  pose  me.  Well, 
it  needn't,  of  course,  among  the  rich  and  the  mighty.  If 
people  are  swells,  and  amply  provided  for  by  their  god- 
fathers and  godmothers  at  their  baptism,  or  otherwise, 
they  can  marry  at  once;  but  the  poor  and  the  struggling 
— that's  Elsie  and  me,  you  know,  Miss  Meysey — the  poor 
and  the  struggling  get  engaged  foolishly,  and  hope  and 
hope  for  a  humble  cottage — the  poetical  cottage,  all  draped 
with  roses  and  wild  honeysuckle,  and  the  well-attired 
woodbine — and  toil  and  moii  and  labor  exceedingly,  and 
find  the  cottage  receding,  receding,  receding  still,  away 
off  in  the  distance,  while  they  plow  their  way  through 
the  hopeless  years,  just  as  the  horizon  recedes  forever 
before  you  when  you  steer  straight  out  for  it  in  a  boat  at 
sea.  The  moral  is — poor  folks  should  not  indulge  in  the 
luxury  of  hearts,  and  should  wrap  themselves  up  severely 
in  their  own  interests,  till  they're  wholly  and  utterly  and 
irretrievably  selfish." 

"And  are  you  selfish,  I  wonder,  Mr.  Massinger?" 

"I  try  to  be,  of  course,  from  a  sense  of  duty;  though 
I'm  afraid  I  make  a  very  poor  hand  at  it.  I  was  born  with 


WHICH  LADY.  59 

a  heart,  and  do  what  I  will,  I  can't  quite  stifle  that  irre- 
pressible natural  organ. — But  I  take  it  all  out,  I  believe, 
in  the  end,  in  writing  verses." 

"You  sent  Elsie  some  verses  this  morning,"  Winifred 
broke  out  in  an  artless  way,  as  if  she  were  merely  stating 
a  common  fact  of  every  day  experience. 

Hugh  had  some  difficulty  in  expressing  a  start,  and  in 
recovering  his  composure  so  as  to  answer  unconcernedly: 
"Oh,  she  showed  them  to  you,  then,  did  she?"  (How 
thoughtless  of  him  to  have  posted  those  poor  rhymes  to 
Elsie,  when  he  might  have  known  beforehand  she  would 
confide  them  at  once  to  Miss  Meysey's  sympathetic  ear!) 

"No,  she  didn't  show  them  to  me,"  Winifred  replied,  in 
the  same  careless  easy  way  as  before.  "I  saw  them  drop 
out  of  the  envelope,  that's  all ;  and  Elsie  put  them  away 
as  soon  as  she  saw  they  were  verses ;  but  I  was  sure  they 
were  yours  because  I  know  your  handwriting — Elsie's 
shown  me  bits  of  your  letters  sometimes." 

"I  often  send  copies  of  my  little  pieces  to  Elsie  before  I 
print  them,"  Hugh  went  on  casually,  in  his  most  candid 
manner.  "It  may  be  vain  of  me,  but  I  like  her  to  see 
them.  She's  a  capital  critic,  Elsie;  women  often  are:  she 
sometimes  suggests  to  me  most  valuable  alterations  and 
modifications  in  some  of  my  verses." 

"Tell  me  these  ones,"  Winifred  asked  abruptly,  with  a 
little  blush. 

It  was  a  trying  moment.  What  was  Hugh  to  do?  The 
verses  he  had  actually  sent  to  Elsie  were  all  emotion  and 
devotion,  and  hearts  and  darts,  and  fairest  and  thou  wear- 
est,  and  charms  and  arms ;  amorous  and  clamorous  chimed 
together  like  old  friends  in  one  stanza,  and  sorrow  dis- 
pelled itself  to-morrow  with  its  usual  cheerful  punctuality 
in  the  next.  To  recite  them  to  Winifred  as  they  stood 
would  be  to  retire  at  once  from  his  half-projected  siege 
of  the  pretty  little  heiress'  heart  and  hand.  For  that  deci- 
sive step  Hugh  was  not  at  present  entirely  prepared.  He 
musn't  allow  himself  to  be  beaten  by  such  a  scholars 
mate  as  this.  He  cleared  his  throat,  and  began  boldly  on 
another  piece,  ringing  out  his  lines  with  a  sonorous  lilt — 
a  set  of  silly,  garrulous,  childish  verses  he  had  written 


60  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

long  since,  but  never  published,  about  some  merry  sea- 
elves  in  an  enchanted  submarine  fairy  country. 


A  tiny  fay 

At  the  bottom  lay 

Of  a  purple  bay 

Unruffled, 

On  whose  crystal  floor 
The  distant  roar 
From  the  surf -bound  shore 

Was  muffled. 


With  his  fairy  wife 
He  passed  his  life 
Undimmed  by  strife 

Or  quarrel; 
And  the  livelong  day 
They  would  merrily  play 
Through  a  labyrinth  gay 

With  coral. 


They  loved  to  dwell 
In  a  pearly  shell, 
And  to  deck  their  cell 

With  amber; 
Or  amid  the  caves 
That  the  riplet  laves 
And  the  beryl  paves 

To  clamber. 


He  went  on  so,  with  his  jigging  versicles,  line  after  line, 
as  they  walked  along  the  firm  white  sand  together,  through 
several  foolish  sing-song  stanzas ;  till  at  last,  when  he  was 
more  than  half-way  through  the  meaningless  little  piece, 
a  sudden  thought  pulled  him  up  abruptly.  He  had  chosen, 
as  he  thought,  the  most  innocent  and  non-committing 
bit  of  utter  trash  in  all  his  private  poetical  repertory ;  but 
now,  as  he  repeated  it  over  to  Winifred  with  easy  intona- 
tion, swinging  his  stick  to  keep  time  as  he  went  on,  he 
recollected  all  at  once  that  the  last  rhymes  flew  off  at  a 
tangent  to  a  very  personal  conclusion — and  what  was 


WHICH  LADY.  61 

worse,  were  addressed,  too,  not  to  Elsie,  but  very  obviously 
to  another  lady!    The  end  was  somewhat  after  this  wise: 


On  a  darting  shrimp 
Our  quaint  little  imp 
With  bridle  of  gimp 

Would  gambol; 
Or  across  the  back 
Of  a  sea-horse  black 
As  a  gentleman's  hack 

He'd  amble. 


Of  emerald  green 
And  sapphire's  sheen 
He  made  his  queen 

A  tiar; 

And   the  merry  two 
Their  whole  life  through 
Were  as  happy  as  you 

And  I  are. 


And  then  came  the  seriously  compromising  bit: 


But  if  you  say 
You  think  this  lay 
Of  the  tiny  fay 

Too  silly, 

Let  it  have  the  praise 
My  eye  betrays 
To  your  own  sweet  gaze, 

My   Lily. 


For  a  man  he  tries 
And  he  toils  and  sighs 
To  be  very  wise 

And   witty; 

But  a  dear  little  dame 
Has  enough  of  fame 
If  she  wins  the  name 

Of  pretty. 

Lily!      Lily!      Oh,    that    discomposing,    unfortunate, 
compromising  Lily !    He  had  met  her  down  in  Warwick- 


62  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

shire  two  seasons  since,  at  a  country-house  where  they 
were  both  staying,  and  had  fallen  over  head  and  ears  in 
love  with  her — then.  Now,  he  only  wished  with  all  his 
heart  and  soul  she  and  her  fays  were  at  the  bottom  of  the 
sea  in  a  body  together.  For  of  course  she  was  penniless. 
If  not,  by  this  time  she  would  no  doubt  have  been  Mrs. 
Massinger. 

Hugh  Massinger  was  a  capital  actor;  but  even  he  could 
hardly  have  ventured  to  pretend  with  a  grave  face  that 
those  Lily  verses  had  ever  been  addressed  to  Elsie  Chal- 
loner.  Everything  depended  on  his  presence  of  mind  and 
a  bold  resolve.  He  hesitated  for  a  moment  at  the  "emerald 
green  and  sapphire's  sheen,"  and  seemed  as  though  he 
couldn't  recall  the  next  line.  After  a  minute  or  two's  pre- 
tended searching  he  recovered  it  feebly,  and  then  he  stum- 
bled again  over  the  end  of  the  stanza. 

"It's  no  use,"  he  cried  at  last,  as  if  angry  with  himself. 
"I  should  only  murder  them  if  I  were  to  go  on  now.  I've 
forgotten  the  rest.  The  words  escape  me.  And  they're 
really  not  worth  your  seriously  listening  to." 

"I  like  them,"  Winifred  said  in  her  simple  way.  "They're 
so  easy  to  understand;  so  melodious  and  meaningless.  I 
love  verse  that  you  don't  have  to  puzzle  over.  I  can't 
bear  Browning  for  that — he's  so  impossible  to  make  any- 
thing sensible  out  of.  But  I  adore  silly  little  things  like 
these,  that  go  in  at  one  ear  and  out  of  the  other,  and  really 
sound  as  if  they  meant  something. — I  shall  ask  Elsie  to 
tell  me  the  end  of  them." 

Here  was  indeed  a  dilemma!  Suppose  she  did,  and 
suppose  Elsie  showed  her  the  real  verses!  At  all  hazards, 
he  must  extricate  himself  somehow  from  this  impossible 
situation. 

"I  wish  you  wouldn't,"  he  said  gently,  in  his  softest  and 
most  persuasive  voice.  "Elsie  mightn't  like  you  to  know 
I  sent  her  my  verses — though  there's  nothing  in  it — girls 
are  so  sensitive  sometimes  about  these  matters. — But  I'll 
tell  you  what  I'll  do,  if  you'll  kindly  allow  me ;  I'll  write 
you  out  the  end  of  them  when  I  get  home  to  the  inn,  and 
bring  them  written  out  in  full,  a  nice  clear  copy,  the  next 
time  I  have  the  pleasure  of  seeing  you."  ("I  can  alter  the 
end  somehow,"  he  thought  to  himself  with  a  sudden 


WHICH  LADY.  63 

inspiration,  "and  dress  them  up  innocently  one  way  or 
another  with  fresh  rhymes,  so  as  to  have  no  special  appli- 
cability of  any  sort  to  anybody  or  anything  anywhere  in 
particular.") 

"Thank  you,"  Winifred  replied,  with  evident  pleasure. 
"I  should  like  that  ever  so  much  better.  It'll  be  so  nice 
to  have  a  poet's  verses  written  out  for  one's  self  in  his  own 
handwriting." 

"You  do  me  too  much  honor,"  Hugh  answered,  with  his 
mock  little  bow.  "I  don't  pretend  to  be  a  poet  at  all ;  I'm 
only  a  versifier." 

They  joined  the  old  folks  in  time  by  the  yawl.  The 
Squire  was  getting  anxious  to  go  back  to  his  garden  now 
— he  foresaw  rain  in  the  sky  to  westward. 

Hugh  glanced  hastily  at  his  watch  with  a  sigh.  "I  must 
be  going  back,  too,"  he  cried.  "It's  nearly  five  now;  we 
can't  be  up  at  the  village  till  six.  Post  goes  out  at  nine, 
they  say,  and  I  have  a  book  to  review  before  post-time. 
It  must  positively  reach  town  not  later  than  to-morrow 
morning.  And  what's  worse,  I  haven't  yet  so  much  as 
begun  to  dip  into  it." 

"But  you  can  never  read  it,  and  review  it  too,  in  three 
hours!"  Winifred  exclaimed,  aghast. 

"Precisely  so,"  Hugh  answered  in  his  jaunty  way,  with 
a  stifled  yawn ;  "and  therefore  I  propose  to  omit  the  read- 
ing as  a  very  unnecessary  and  wasteful  preliminary.  It 
often  prejudices  one  against  a  book  to  know  what's  in  it. 
You  approach  a  work  you  haven't  read  with  a  mind  un- 
biased by  preconceived  impressions.  Besides,  this  is  only 
a  three-volume  novel ;  they're  all  alike ;  it  doesn't  matter. 
You  can  say  the  plot  is  crude  and  ill-constructed,  the 
dialogue  feeble,  the  descriptions  vile,  the  situations  bor- 
rowed, and  the  characters  all  mere  conventional  puppets. 
The  same  review  will  do  equally  well  for  the  whole  stupid 
lot  of  them.  I  usually  follow  Sydney  Smith's  method  in 
that  matter;  I  cut  a  few  pages  at  random,  here  and  there, 
and  then  smell  the  paper-knife." 

"But  is  that  just?"  Elsie  asked  quietly,  a  slight  shade 
coming  over  her  earnest  face. 

"My  dear  Miss  Challoner,"  Warren  Relf  put  in  hastily, 
"have  you  known  Massinger  so  many  years  without  find- 


64  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

ing  out  that  he's  always  a  great  deal  better  than  he  himself 
pretends  to  be?  I  know  him  well  enough  to  feel  quite 
confident  he'll  read  every  word  of  that  novel  through 
to-night,  if  he  sits  up  till  four  o'clock  in  the  morning  to  do 
it;  and  he'll  let  the  London  people  have  their  review  in 
time,  if  he  telegraphs  up  every  blessed  word  of  it  by  special 
wire  to-morrow  morning.  His  wickedness  is  always  only 
his  brag;  his  goodness  he  hides  carefully  under  his  own 
extremely  capacious  bushel." 

Hugh  'laughed.  "As  you  know  me  so  much  better  than 
I  know  myself,  my  dear  boy,"  he  replied  easily,  ''there's 
nothing  more  to  be  said  about  it.  I'm  glad  to  receive  so 
good  a  character  from  a  connoisseur  in  human  nature. 
I  really  never  knew  before  what  an  amiable  and  estimable 
member  of  society  hid  himself  under  my  rugged  and 
unprepossessing  exterior."  And  as  he  said  it,  he  drew 
himself  up,  and  darting  a  laugh  from  the  corner  of  those 
sad  black  eyes,  looked  at  the  moment  the  handsomest 
and  most  utterly  killing  man  in  the  county  of  Suffolk. 

When  Elsie  and  Winifred  went  up  to  their  own  rooms 
that  evening,  the  younger  girl,  slipping  into  Elsie's  bed- 
room for  a  moment,  took  her  friend's  hands  tenderly  in 
her  own,  and  looking  long  and  eagerly  into  the  other's 
eyes,  said  at  last  in  a  quick  tone  of  unexpected  discovery: 
"Elsie,  he's  awfully  nice-looking  and  awfully  clever,  this 
Oxford  cousin  of  yours.  I  like  him  immensely." 

Elsie  brought  back  her  eyes  from  infinity  with  a  sudden 
start.  "I'm  glad  you  do,  dear,"  she  said,  looking  down  at 
her  kindly.  "I  wanted  you  to  like  him.  I  should  have 
been  dreadfully  disappointed,  in  fact,  if  you  didn't.  I'm 
exceedingly  fond  of  Hugh,  Winnie." 

Winifred  paused  for  a  second  significantly;  then  she 
asked  point-blank:  "Elsie,  are  you  engaged  to  him?" 

"Engaged  to  him!  My  darling,  what  ever  made  you 
dream  of  such  a  thing? — Engaged  to  Hugh! — engaged  to 
Hugh  Massinger! — Why,  Winnie,  you  know,  he's  my 
own  cousin." 

"But  you  don't  answer  my  question  plainly,"  Winifred 
persisted  with  girlish  determination.  "Are  you  engaged 
to  him  or  are  you  not?" 

Elsie,  mindful  of  Hugh's  frequent  declarations/answered 


FRIENDS  IN  COUNCIL..  65 

boldly  (and  not  quite  untruthfully) :    "No,  I'm  not,  Wini- 
fred." 

The  heiress  of  Whitestrand  stroked  her  friend's  hair 
with  a  sigh  of  relief.  That  sigh  was  blind.  Girl  though 
she  was,  she  might  clearly  have  seen  with  a  woman's 
instinct  that  Elsie's  flushed  cheek  and  downcast  eyes 
belied  to  the  utmost  her  spoken  word.  But  she  did  not  see 
it.  All  preoccupied  as  she  was  with  her  own  thoughts 
and  her  own  wishes,  she  never  observed  at  all  those  mute 
witnesses  to  Elsie's  love  for  her  handsome  cousin.  She 
was  satisfied  in  her  heart  with  Hugh's  and  Elsie's  double 
verbal  denial.  She  said  to  herself  with  a  thrill  in  her  own 
soul,  as  a  girl  will  do  in  the  first  full  flush  of  her  earliest 
passion:  "Then  I  may  love  him  if  I  like!  I  may  make  him 
love  me!  It  won't  be  wrong  to  Elsie  for  me  to  love  him!" 


CHAPTER  VII. 

FRIENDS  IN  COUNCIL. 

That  same  night,  as  the  Squire  and  Mrs.  Meysey  sat  by 
themselves  toward  the  small  hours — after  the  girls  had 
unanimously  evacuated  the  drawing-room — discussing 
the  affairs  of  the  universe  generally,  as  then  and  there 
envisaged,  over  a  glass  of  claret-cup,  the  mother  looked 
up  at  last  with  a  sudden  glance  into  the  father's  face,  and 
said  in  a  tone  half-anxious,  half-timid:  "Tom,  did  it  hap- 
pen to  strike  you  this  afternoon  that  that  handsome  cousin 
of  Elsie  Challoner's  seemed  to  take  a  great  fancy  to  our 
Winifred?" 

The  Squire  stirred  his  claret-cup  idly  with  his  spoon. 
"I  suppose  the  fellow  has  eyes  in  his  head,"  he  answered 
bluntly.  "No  man  in  his  senses  could  ever  look  at  our 
little  Winnie,  I  should  think,  Emily,  and  not  fall  over  his 
ears  in  love  with  her." 

Mrs.  Meysey  waited  a  minute  or  two  more  in  silent 
suspense  before  she  spoke  again;  then  she  said  once 


66  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

more,  very  tentatively:  "He  seems  a  tolerably  nice  young 
man,  I  think,  Tom." 

"Oh,  he's  well  enough,  I  dare  say,"  the  Squire  admitted 
grudgingly. 

"A  barrister,  he  says.  That's  a  very  good  profession," 
Mrs.  Meysey  went  on,  still  feeling  her  way  by  gradual 
stages. 

"Never  heard  so  in  my  life  before,"  the  Squire  grunted 
out.  "There  are  barristers  and  barristers.  He  gets  no 
briefs.  Lives  on  literature,  by  what  he  tells  me :  the  next 
door  to  living  upon  your  wits,  I  call  it." 

"But  I  mean,  it's  a  gentleman's  profession,  anyhow, 
Tom,  the  bar." 

"Oh,  the  man's  a  gentleman,  of  course,  if  it  comes  to 
that — a  perfect  gentleman;  and  an  Oxford  man,  and  a 
person  of  culture,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing — I  don't  deny 
it  He's  a  very  presentable  fellow,  too,-  in  his  own  way ; 
and  most  intelligent:  understands  the  riparian  proprietors' 
question  as  easy  as  anything. — You  can  ask  him  to  dinner 
whenever  you  choose,  if  that's  what  you're  driving  at." 

Mrs.  Meysey  called  another  halt  for  a  few  seconds  before 
she  reopened  fire,  still  more  timidly  than  ever.  "Tom,  do 
you  know  I  rather  fancy  he  really  likes  our  Winifred?'' 
she  murmured,  gasping. 

"Of  course  he  likes  our  Winifred,"  the  Squire  repeated, 
with  profound  conviction  in  ever}7  tone  of  his  voice.  "I 
should  like  to  know  who  on  earth  there  is  that  doesn't 
like  our  Winifred!  Nothing  new  in  that.  I  could  have 
told  you  so  myself.  Go  ahead  with  it,  then. — What  next, 
now,  Emily?" 

"Well,  I  think,  Tom,  if  I'm  not  mistaken,  Winifred 
seemed  rather  inclined  to  take  a  fancy  to  him  too,  some- 
how." 

Thomas  Wyville  Meysey  laid  down  his  glass  incredu- 
lously on  the  small  side-table.  He  didn't  explode,  but  he 
hung  fire  for  a  moment.  "You  women  are  always  fancy- 
ing things,"  he  said  at  last,  with  a  slight  frown.  "You 
think  you're  so  precious  quick,  you  do,  at  reading  other 
people's  faces.  I  don't  deny  you  often  succeed  in  reading 
them  right.  You  read  mine  precious  often,  I  know,  when 
I  don't  want  you  to — that  I  can  swear  to.  But  sometimes, 


FRIENDS  IN  COUNCIL.  67 

Emily,  you  know  you  read  what  isn't  in  them.  That's  the 
way  with  all  decipherers  of  hieroglyphics.  They  see  a 
great  deal  more  in  things  than  ever  was  put  there.  You 
remember  that  time  when  I  met  old  Hillier  down  by  the 
copse  yonder " 

"Yes,  yes,  I  remember,"  Mrs.  Meysey  admitted,  check- 
ing him  at  the  outset  with  an  astute  concession.  She  had 
cause  to  remember  the  facts,  indeed,  for  the  Squire  re- 
minded her  of  that  one  obvious  and  palpable  mistake 
about  the  young  fox-cubs  at  least  three  times  a  week,  the 
year  round,  on  an  average.  "I  was  wrong  that  time;  I 
know  I  was,  of  course.  You  weren't  in  the  least  annoyed 
with  Mr.  Hillier.  But  I  think — I  don't  say  I'm  sure,  ob- 
serve, dear — but  I  think  Winifred's  likely  to  take  a  fancy 
in  time  to  this  young  Mr.  Massinger.  Now,  the  question 
is,  if  she  does  take  a  fancy  to  him — a  serious  fancy — and 
he  to  her — what  are  you  and  I  to  do  about  it?" 

As  she  spoke,  Mrs.  Meysey  looked  hard  at  the  lamp, 
and  then  at  her  husband,  wondering  with  what  sort  of 
grace  he  would  receive  this  very  revolutionary  and  upset- 
ting suggestion.  For  herself — though  mothers  are  hard 
to  please — it  may  as  well  be  admitted  offhand,  she  had 
fallen  a  ready  victim  at  once  to  Hugh  Massinger's  charms 
and  brilliancy  and  blandishments.  Such  a  nice  young 
man,  so  handsome  and  gentlemanly,  so  adroit  in  his  talk, 
so  admirable  in  his  principles,  and  though  far  from  rich, 
yet,  in  his  way,  distinguished!  A  better  young  man,  dar- 
ling Winifred  was  hardly  likely  to  meet  with.  But  what 
would  dear  Tom  think  about  him?  she  wondered.  Dear 
Tom  had  such  very  expansive  not  to  say  Utopian  ideas 
for  Winifred — thought  nobody  but  a  Duke  or  a  Prince  of 
the  blood  half  good  enough  for  her:  though,  to  be  sure, 
experience  would  seem  to  suggest  that  Dukes  and  Princes, 
after  all,  are  only  human,  and  not  originally  very  much 
better  than  other  people.  Whatever  superior  moral  excel- 
lence we  usually  detect  in  the  finished  product  may  no 
doubt  be  safely  set  down  in  ultimate  analysis  to  the  excep- 
tional pains  bestowed  by  society  upon  their  ethical  educa- 
tion. 

The  Squire  looked  into  his  claret-cup  profoundly  for  a 
few  seconds  before  answering,  as  if  he  expected  to  find  it 


gg  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

a  perfect  Dr.  Dee's  divining  crystal,  big  with  hints  as  to 
his  daughter's  future ;  and  then  he  burst  out  abruptly  with 
a  grunt :  "I  suppose  we  must  leave  the  answering  of  that 
question  entirely  to  Winnie." 

Mrs.  Meysey  did  not  dare  to  let  her  internal  sigh  of 
relief  escape  her  throat;  that  would  have  been  too  com- 
promising, and  would  have  alarmed  dear  Tom.  So  she 
stifled  it  quietly.  Then  dear  Tom  was  not  wholly  averse, 
after  all,  to  this  young  Mr.  Massinger.  He,  too,  had 
fallen  a  victim  to  the  poet's  wiles.  That  was  well ;  for  Mrs. 
Meysey,  with  a  mother's  eye,  had  read  Winifred's  heart 
through  and  through.  But  we  must  not  seem  to  give  in 
too  soon.  A  show  of  resistance  runs  in  the  grain  with 
women.  "He's  got  no  money,"  she  murmured  suggest- 
ively. 

The  Squire  flared  up.  "Money!"  he  cried,  with  infinite 
contempt,  "money!  money!  Who  the  dickens  says  any- 
thing to  me  about  money?  I  believe  that's  all  on  earth 
you  women  think  about. — Money  indeed!  Much  I  care 
about  money,  Emily.  I  dare  say  the  young  fellow  hasn't 
got  money.  What  then?  Who  cares  for  that?  He's  got 
money's  worth.  He's  got  brains;  he's  got  principles;  he's 
got  the  will  to  work  and  to  get  on.  He'll  be  a  judge  in 
time,  I  don't  doubt  If  a  man  like  that  were  to  marry  our 
Winifred,  with  the  aid  we  could  give  him  and  the  friends 
we  could  find  him,  he  ought  to  rise  by  quick  stages  to  be 
— anything  you  like — Lord  Chancellor,  or  Postmaster- 
General,  or  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  for  the  matter  of 
that,  if  your  tastes  happen  to  run  in  that  direction." 

"He  hasn't  done  much  at  the  bar  yet,"  Mrs.  Meysey 
continued,  playing  her  fish  dexterously  before  landing  it. 

"Hasn't  done  much!  Of  course  he  hasn't  done  much! 
How  the  dickens  could  he?  Can  a  man  make  briefs  for 
himself,  do  you  suppose?  He's  given  himself  up,  he  tells 
me,  to  earning  a  livelihood  by  writing  for  the  papers. 
Penny-a-lining;  writing  for  the  papers.  He  had  to  do  it. 
It's  a  pity,  upon  my  word,  a  clever  young  fellow  like  that 
— he  understands  the  riparian  proprietors'  question  down 
to  the  very  ground — should  be  compelled  to  turn  aside 
from  his  proper  work  at  the  bar  to  serve  tables,  so  to  speak 
— to  gain  his  daily  bread  by  penny-a-lining.  If  Winifred 


FRIENDS  IN  COUNCIL.  89 

were  to  take  a  fancy  to  a  young  man  like  that,  now " 

The  Squire  paused,  and  eyed  the  light  through  his  glass 
reflectively. 

"He's  very  presentable,"  Mrs.  Meysey  went  on,  rear- 
ranging her  workbox,  and  still  angling  cleverly  for  dear 
Tom's  indignation. 

"He's  a  man  any  woman  might  be  perfectly  proud  of," 
the  Squire  retorted  in  a  thunderous  voice  with  a  firm  con- 
viction. 

Mrs.  Meysey  followed  up  her  advantage  persistently  for 
twenty  minutes,  insinuating  every  possible  hint  against 
Hugh,  and  leading  the  Squire  deeper  and  deeper  into  a 
hopeless  slough  of  unqualified  commendation.  At  the 
end  of  that  time  she  said  quietly:  "Then  I  understand, 
Tom,  that  if  Winifred  and  this  young  Massinger  take  a 
fancy  to  one  another,  you  don't  put  an  absolute  veto  on 
the  idea  of  their  getting  engaged,  do  you?" 

"I  only  want  Winnie  to  choose  for  herself,"  the  Squire 
answered  with  prompt  decision.  "Not  that  I  suppose  for 
a  moment  there's  anything  in  this  young  fellow's  talking 
a  bit  to  her.  Men  will  flirt,  and  girls  will  let  'em.  Getting 
engaged,  indeed!  You  count  your  chickens  before  the 
eggs  are  laid.  A  man  can't  look  at  a  girl  nowadays,  but 
you  women  must  take  it  into  your  precious  heads  at  once 
he  wants  to  go  straight  off  to  church  and  marry  her. 
However,  for  my  part,  I'm  not  going  to  interfere  in  the 
matter  one  way  or  the  other.  I'd  rather  she'd  marry  the 
man  she  loves,  and  the  man  who  loves  her,  whenever  he 
turns  up,  than  marry  fifty  thousand  pounds  and  the  best 
estate  in  all  Suffolk." 

Mrs.  Meysey  had  carried  her  point  with  honors.  "Per- 
haps you're  right,  my  dear,"  she  said  diplomatically,  as 
who  should  yield  to  superior  wisdom.  It  was  her  policy 
not  to  appear  too  eager. 

"Perhaps,  I'm  right!"  the  Squire  echoed,  half  in  com- 
placency and  half  in  anger.  "Of  course  I'm  right.  I 
know  I'm  right,  Emily.  Why,  I  was  reading  in  a  book 
the  other  day  a  most  splendid  appeal  from  some  philo- 
sophic writer  or  other  about  making  fewer  marriages  in 
future  to  please  Mamma,  and  more  to  suit  the  tastes  of 
the  parties  concerned,  and  subserve  the  good  of  coming 


to  THIS  MORTAL  C6IL. 

generations.  I  think  it  was  an  article  in  one  of  the  maga- 
zines. It's  the  right  way,  I'm  sure  of  that;  and  in  Wini- 
fred's case  I  mean  to  stick  to  it." 

So,  from  that  day  forth,  if  it  was  Hugh  Massinger's 
intention  or  desire  to  prosecute  his  projected  military 
operations  against  Winifred  Meysey's  hand  and  heart,  he 
found  at  least  a  benevolent  neutral  in  the  old  Squire,  and 
a  secret,  silent,  but  none  the  less  powerful  domestic  ally 
in  Mrs.  Meysey.  It  is  not  often  that  a  penniless  suitor 
thus  enlists  the  sympathies  of  the  parental  authorities, 
who  ought  by  precedent  to  form  the  central  portion  of 
the  defensive  forces,  on  his  own  side  in  such  an  aggressive 
enterprise.  But  with  Hugh  Massinger,  nobody  ever  even 
noticed  it  as  a  singular  exception.  He  was  so  clever,  so 
handsome,  so  full  of  promise,  so  courteous  and  courtly  in 
his  demeanor  to  young  and  old,  so  rich  in  future  hopes 
and  ambitions,  that  not  the  Squire  alone,  but  everybody 
else  who  came  in  contact  with  his  easy  smile,  accepted  him 
beforehand  as  almost  already  a  Lord  Chancellor,  or  a 
Poet  Laureate,  or  an  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  according 
as  he  might  choose  to  direct  his  talents  into  this  channel 
or  that;  and  failed  to  be  surprised  that  the  Meyseys  or 
anybody  else  on  earth  should  accept  him  with  effusion  as 
a  favored  postulant  for  the  hand  of  their  only  daughter  and 
heiress.  There  are  a  few  such  universal  favorites  here  and 
there  in  the  world :  whenever  you  meet  one,  smile  with  the 
rest,  but  remember  that  his  recipe  is  a  simple  one — 
Humbug. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 
THE  ROADS  DIVIDE. 

Hugh  stopped  for  two  months  or  more  at  Whitestrand, 
and  during  all  that  time  he  saw  much  both  of  Elsie  and 
of  Winifred.  The  Meyseys  introduced  him  with  cordial 
pleasure  to  all  the  melancholy  gaities  of  the  sleepy  little 
peninsula.  He  duly  attended  with  them  the  somnolent 
garden-parties  on  the  smooth  lawns  of  neighboring 
Squires:  the  monotonous  picnics  up  the  tidal  stream  of 
the  meandering  Char;  the  heavy  dinners  at  every  local 


ROADS  DIVIDE.  ft 

rector's  and  vicar's  and  resident  baronets;  with  all  the 
other  dead-alive  entertainments  of  the  dullest  and  most 
stick-in-the-mud  corner  of  all  England.  The  London 
poet  enlivened  them  all,  however,  with  his  never-failing 
flow  of  exotic  humor,  and  his  slow,  drawled-out  readiness 
of  Pali-Mall  repartee.  It  was  a  comfort  to  him,  indeed, 
to  get  among  these  unspoiled  and  unsophisticated  children 
or  nature;  he  could  palm  off  upon  them  as  original  the 
last  good  thing  of  that  fellow  Hatherley's  from  the  smok- 
ing-room of  the  Cheyne  Row  Club,  or  fire  back  upon  them, 
undetected,  dim  reminiscences  of  pungent  chaff  overheard 
in  brilliant  West-end  drawing-rooms.  And  then,  there 
were  Elsie  and  Winifred  to  amuse  him ;  and  Hugh,  luxu- 
rious, easy-going,  epicurean  philosopher  that  he  was, 
took  no  trouble  to  decide  in  his  own  mind  even  what 
might  be  his  ultimate  intentions  toward  either  fair  lady, 
satisfied  only,  as  he  phrased  it  to  his  inner  self,  to  take 
the  goods  the  gods  provided  for  the  passing  moment,  and 
to  keep  them  both  well  in  hand  together.  "How  happy 
could  I  be  with  either,"  sings  Captain  Macheath  in  the 
oft-quoted  couplet,  "were  t'other  dear  charmer  away." 
Hugh  took  a  still  more  lenient  view  of  his  personal  respon- 
sibilities than  the  happy-go-lucky  knight  of  the  highway; 
he  was  quite  content  to  be  blest,  while  he  could,  with  both 
at  once,  asking  no  questions,  for  conscience  sake,  of  his 
own  final  disposition,  marital  or  otherwise,  toward  one  or 
the  other,  but  leaving  the  problem  of  his  matrimonial 
arrangements  for  fate,  or  chance,  to  settle  in  its  own  good' 
fashion. 

It  was  just  a  week  after  his  arrival  at  Whitestrand  that 
he  went  up  one  morning  early  to  the  Hall.  Elsie  and 
Winifred  were  seated  together  on  a  rug  under  the  big 
tree,  engaged  in  reading  one  novel  between  them. 

"You  must  wish  Winifred  many  happy  returns  of  the 
day,"  Elsie  called  out  gaily,  looking  up  from  her  book 
as  Hugh  approached  them.  "It's  her  birthday,  Hugh; 
and  just  see  what  a  lovely,  delightful  present  Mr.  Meysey's 
given  her!" 

Winifred  held  out  the  present  at  arm's  length  for  his 
admiration.  It  was  a  pretty  little  watch,  in  gold  and 
enamel,  with  her  initials  engraved  on  the  back  on  a  broad 


72  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

shield.  "It's  just  a  beauty!  I  should  love  one  like  it 
myself!"  Elsie  cried  enthusiastically.  "Did  you  ever  see 
such  a  dear  little  thing?  It's  keyless  too,  and  so  exquisitely 
finished.  It  really  makes  me  feel  quite  ashamed  of  my 
own  poor  old  battered  silver  one." 

Hugh  took  the  watch  and  examined  it  carefully.  He 
noted  the  maker's  name  upon  the  dial,  and,  opening  the 
back,  made  a  rapid  mental  memorandum  of  the  number. 
A  sudden  thought  had  flashed  across  him  at  the  moment. 
He  waited  only  a  few  minutes  at  the  Hall,  and  then  asked 
the  two  girls  if  they  could  walk  down  into  the  village  with 
him.  He  had  a  telegram  to  send  off,  he  said,  which  he 
had  only  just  at  that  moment  remembered.  Would  they 
mind  stepping  over  with  him  as  far  as  the  postoflice? 

They  strolled  together  into  the  sleepy  High  street.  At 
the  office,  Hugh  wrote  and  sent  off  his  telegram.  It  was 
addressed  to  a  well-known  firm  of  watchmakers  in  Lud- 
gate  Hill.  "Could  you  send  me  by  to-morrow  evening's 
post,  to  address  as  below,  a  lady's  gold  and  enamel  watch, 
with  initials  'E.  C,  from  H.  M.,'  engraven  on  shield  on 
back,  but  in  every  other  respect  precisely  similar  to  Xo. 
2479  just  supplied  to  Mr.  Meysey,  of  Whitestrand  Hall? 
If  so,  telegraph  back  cash  price  at  once,  and  check  for 
amount  shall  be  sent  immediately.  Reply  paid. — Hugh 
Massinger,  Fisherman's  Rest,  Whitestrand,  Suffolk." 

Before  lunch-time  the  reply  had  duly  arrived :  "Watch 
shall  be  sent  on  receipt  of  check.  Price  twenty-five  guin- 
eas." So  far,  so  good.  It  was  a  fair  amount  for  a  journey- 
man journalist  to  pay  for  a  present;  but,  as  Hugh  shrewdly 
reflected,  it  would  kill  two  birds  \vith  one  stone.  Day 
after  to-morrow  was  Elsie's  birthday.  The  watch  would 
give  Elsie  pleasure;  and  Hugh,  to  do  him  justice,  thor- 
oughly loved  giving  pleasure  to  anybody,  especially  a 
pretty  girl,  and  above  all  Elsie.  But  it  could  also  do  him 
no  harm  in  the  Meyseys'  eyes  to  see  that,  journeyman 
journalist  as  he  was,  he  was  earning  enough  to  afford  to 
throw  away  twenty-five  guineas  on  a  mere  present  to  a 
governess-cousin.  There  is  a  time  for  economy,  and  there 
is  a  time  for  lavishness.  The  present  moment  clearly  came 
under  the  latter  category. 

On  the  second  morning,  true  to  promise,  the  watch 


THE  ROADS  DIVIDE.  73 

arrived  by  the  early  post ;  and  Hugh  took  it  up  with  pride 
to  the  Hall,  to  bestow  it  in  a  casual  way  upon  breathless 
and  affectionate  Elsie.  He  took  it  up  for  a  set  purpose. 
He  would  show  these  purse-proud  landed  aristocrats  that 
his  cousin  could  sport  as  good  a  watch  any  day  as  their 
own  daughter.  The  Massingers  themselves  had  been 
landed  aristocrats — not  presumably  purse-proud — in  their 
own  day  in  dear  old  Devonshire ;  but  the  estates  had  dis- 
appeared in  hoiises  and  port  and  riotous  living  two  gener- 
ations since;  and  Hugh  was  now  proving  in  his  own 
person  the  truth  of  the  naif  old  English  adage — "When 
land  is  gone  and  money  spent,  then  laming  is  most  excel- 
lent." Journalism  is  a  poor  sort  of  trade  in  its  way;  but 
at  any  rate  an  able  man  can  earn  his  bread  and  salt  at  it 
somehow.  Hugh  didn't  grudge  those  twenty-five  guineas ; 
he  regarded  them,  as  he  regarded  his  poems,  in  the  light 
of  a  valuable  long  investment.  They  were  a  sort  of  indi- 
rect double  bid  for  the  senior  Meysey's  respect,  and  for 
Winifred's  fervent  admiration.  When  a  man  is  paying 
attentions  to  a  pretty  girl,  there's  nothing  on  earth  he 
desires  so  much  as  to  appear  in  her  eyes  lavishly  generous. 
A  less  abstruse  philosopher,  however,  might  perhaps  have 
bestowed  his  generosity  direct  upon  Winifred  in  propria 
persona:  Hugh,  with  his  subtle  calculation  of  long  odds 
and  remote  chances,  deemed  it  wiser  to  display  it  in  the 
first  instance  obliquely  upon  Elsie.  This  was  an  acute 
little  piece  of  psychological  by-play.  A  man  who  can 
make  a  present  like  that  to  a  poor  cousin,  with  whom  he 
stands  upon  a  purely  cousinly  footing,  must  be,  after  all, 
not  only  generous,  but  a  ripping  good  fellow  into  the 
bargain.  How  would  he  not  comport  himself  under  sim- 
ilar circumstances  to  the  maiden  of  his  choice,  and  to  the 
wife  of  his  bosom? 

Elsie  took  the  watch,  when  Hugh  produced  it,  with  a 
little  cry  of  delight  and  surprise;  then,  looking  at  the 
initials  so  hastily  engraved  in  neat  Lombardic  letters  on 
the  back,  the  tears  rose  to  her  eyes  irrepressibly  as  she 
said,  with  a  gentle  pressure  of  his  hand  in  hers:  "I  know 
now,  Hugh,  what  that  telegram  was  about  the  other  morn- 
ing. How  very,  very  kind  and  good  of  you  to  think  of  it. 
But  I  almost  wish  you  hadn't  given  it  to  me.  I  shall  never 


74  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

forgive  myself  for  having  said  before  you  I  should  like 
one  the  same  sort  as  Winifred's.  I'm  quite  ashamed  of 
your  having  thought  I  meant  to  hint  at  it." 

"Not  at  all,"  Hugh  answered,  with  just  the  faintest  pos- 
sible return  of  her  gentle  pressure.  "I  was  twisting  it  over 
in  my  own  mind  what  on  earth  I  could  ever  find  to  give 
you.  I  thought  first  of  a  copy  of  my  last  little  volume; 
but  then  that's  nothing — I'm  only  too  sensible  myself  of  its 
small  worth.  A  book  from  an  author  is  like  spoiled  peaches 
from  a  market-gardener:  he  gives  them  away  only  when  he 
has  a  glut  of  them.  So,  when  you  said  you'd  like  a  watch  of 
the  same  sort  as  Miss  Meysey's,  it  seemed  to  me  a  perfect 
interposition  of  chance  on  my  behalf.  I  knew  what  to  get, 
and  I  got  it  at  once.  I'm  only  glad  those  London  watch- 
maker fellows,  whose  respected  name  I've  quite  forgotten, 
had  time  to  engrave  your  initials  on  it." 

"But,  Hugh,  it  must  have  cost  you  such  a  mint  of 
money." 

Hugh  waved  a  deprecatory  hand  with  airy  magnificence 
over  the  broad  shrubbery.  "A  mere  trifle,"  he  said,  as 
who  could  command  thousands.  "It  came  to  just  the  exact 
sum  the  'Contemporary'  paid  me  for  that  last  article  of 
mine  on  The  Future  of  Marriage.' "  (Which  was  quite 
true,  the  article  in  question  having  run  to  precisely  twenty- 
five  pages,  at  the  usual  honorarium  of  a  guinea  a  page.) 
"It  took  me  a  few  hours  only  to  dash  it  off."  (Which  was 
scarcely  so  accurate,  it  not  being  usual  for  even  the  most 
abandoned  or  practiced  of  journalists  to  "dash  off"  articles 
for  a  leading  review ;  and  the  mere  physical  task  of  writing 
twenty-five  pages  of  solid  letterpress  being  considerably 
greater  than  most  men,  however  rapid  their  pens,  could 
venture  to  undertake  in  a  few  hours.) 

Winifred  looked  up  at  him  with  a  timid  glance.  "It's  a 
lovely  watch,"  she  said,  taking  it  over  with  an  admiring 
look  from  Elsie:  "and  the  inscription  makes  it  ever  so 
much  nicer.  One  would  prize  it,  of  course,  for  that  alone. 
But  if  I'd  been  Elsie,  I'd  a  thousand  time  rather  have  had  a 
volume  of  poems,  with  the  author's  autograph  dedication, 
than  all  the  watches  in  England." 

"\Vould  you?"  Hugh  answered,  with  an  amused  smile. 
"You  rate  the  autographs  of  a  living  versifier  immensely 


THE  ROADS  DIVIDE.  75 

above  their  market  value.  Even  Tennyson's  may  be 
bought  at  a  shop  in  the  Strand,  you  know,  for  a  few  shil- 
lings. I  feel  this  indeed  fame.  I  shall  begin  to  grow  con- 
ceited soon  at  this  rate. — And  by  the  way,  Elsie,  I've 
brought  you  a  little  bit  of  verse  too.  Your  Laureate  has 
not  forgotten  or  neglected  his  customary  duty.  I  shall 
expect  a  butt  of  sack  in  return  for  these :  or  may  I  venture 
to  take  it  out  instead  in  nectar?"  They  stood  all  three 
behind  a  group  of  syringa  bushes.  He  touched  her  lips 
with  his  own  lightly  as  he  spoke.  "Many  happy  returns 
of  the  day — as  a  cousin,"  he  added,  laughing. — "And  now, 
what's  your  programme  for  the  day,  Elsie?" 

"We  want  you  to  row  us  up  the  river  to  Snade,  if  it's 
not  too  hot,  Hugh,"  his  pretty  cousin  responded,  all 
blushes. 

"Tuus,  O  Regina,  quid  optes,  Explorare  labor;  mihi 
jussa  capessere  fas  est,"  Hugh  quoted  merrily.  "That's 
the  best  of  talking  to  a  Girton  girl,  you  see.  You  can  fire 
off  your  most  epigrammatic  Latin  quotation  at  her,  as  it 
rises  to  your  lips,  and  she  understands  it.  How  delightful 
that  is,  now.  As  a  rule,  my  Latin  quotations,  which  are 
frequent  and  free,  as  Truthful  James  says,  besides  being 
neat  and  appropriate,  like  after-dinner  speeches,  fall  quite 
flat  upon  the  stony  ground  of  the  feminine  intelligence — 
which  last  remark,  I  flatter  myself,  in  the  matter  of  mixed' 
metaphor,  would  do  credit  to  Sir  Boyle  Roche  in  his  wild- 
est flight  of  Hibernian  eloquence.  I  made  a  lovely  Latin 
pun  at  a  picnic  once.  We  had  some  chicken  and  ham 
sausage — a  great  red  German  sausage  of  the  polony  order, 
in  a  sort  of  huge  boiled-lobster-colored  skin ;  and  toward 
the  end  of  lunch,  somebody  asked  me  for  another  slice  of 
it.  'There  isn't  any,' said  I.  'It's  all  gone.  Finis  Poloniae!' 
Nobody  laughed.  They  didn't  know  that  'Finis  Poloniae' 
were  the  last  words  uttered  by  a  distinguished  patriot  and 
soldier,  'when  Freedom  shrieked  as  Kosciusko  fell.'  That 
comes  of  firing  off  your  remarks,  you  see,  quite  above  the 
head  of  your  respected  audience." 

"But  what  does  that  mean  that  you  just  said  this  minute 
to  Elsie?"  Winifred  asked  doubtfully. 

"What!  A  lady  in  these  latter  days  who  doesn't  talk 
Latin  J"  Hugh  cried,  with  pretended  rapture.  "This  is  too 


76  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

delicious!  I  hardly  expected  such  good  fortune.  I  shall 
have  the  well-known  joy,  then,  of  explaining  my  own  feeble 
little  joke,  after  all,  and  grimly  translating  my  own  poor 
quotation.  It  means,  'Thy  task  it  is,  O  Queen,  to  state 
thy  will :  Mine,  thy  behests  to  serve  for  good  or  ill.'  Rough 
translation,  not  necessarily  intended  for  publication,  but 
given  merely  as  a  guarantee  of  good  faith,  as  the  news- 
papers put  it.  Eolus  makes  the  original  remark  to  Juno 
in  the  first  'Enid,'  when  he's  just  about  to  raise  the  wind — 
literally,  not  figuratively — on  her  behalf,  against  the  un- 
fortunate Trojans.  He  was  then  occupying  the  same  post 
as  clerk  of  the  weather,  that  is  now  filled  jointly  by  the 
correspondent  of  the  'New  York  Herald'  and  Mr.  Robert 
Scott  of  the  Meteorological  Office.  I  hope  they'll  send  us 
no  squalls  to-day,  if  you  and  Mrs.  Meysey  are  going  up  the 
river  with  us." 

On  their  way  to  the  boat,  Hugh  stopped  a  moment  at 
the  inn  to  write  hastily  another  telegram.  It  was  to  his 
London  publisher:  "Please  kindly  send  a  copy  of  'Echoes 
from  Callimachus,'  by  first  post  to  my  address  as  under." 
And  in  five  minutes  more,  the  telegram  dispatched,  they 
were  all  rowing  upstream  in  a  merry  party  toward  Snade 
meadows.  Hugh's  plan  of  campaign  was  now  finally  de- 
cided. He  had  nothing  to  do  but  to  carry  out  in  detail 
his  siege  operations. 

In  the  meadows  he  had  ten  minutes  or  so  alone  with 
Winifred.  "Why,  Mr.  Massinger,"  she  said,  with  a  sur- 
prised look,  "was  it  you,  then,  who  wrote  that  lovely 
article,  in  the  'Contemporary,'  on  'The  Future  of  Mar- 
riage,' we've  all  been  reading?" 

"I'm  glad  you  liked  it,"  Hugh  answered,  with  evident 
pleasure ;  "and  I  suppose  it's  no  use  now  trying  any  longer 
to  conceal  the  fact  that  I  was  indeed  the  culprit."  " 

"But  there's  another  name  to  it,"  Winifred  murmured 
in  reply.  "And  Mamma  thought  it  must  be  Mr.  Stone, 
the  novelist." 

"Habitual  criminals  are  often  wrongly  suspected,"  Hugh 
answered,  with  a  languid  laugh.  "I  didn't  put  my  own 
name  to  it,  however,  because  I  was  afraid  it  was  a  trifle 
sentimental,  and  I  hate  sentiment.  Indeed,  to  say  the 
truth — it  was  a  cruel  trick,  perhaps,  but  I  imitated  many 


THE  ROADS  DIVIDE.  77 

of  Stone's  little  mannerisms,  because  I  wanted  people  to 
think  it  was  really  Stone  himself  who  wrote  it.  But  for  all 
that,  I  believe  it  all — every  word  of  it,  I  assure  you,  Miss 
Meysey." 

"It  was  a  lovely  article,"  Winifred  cried,  enthusiastically. 
"Papa  read  it,  and  was  quite  enchanted  with  it.  He  said 
it  was  so  sensible — just  what  he'd  always  thought  about 
marriage  himself,  though  he  never  could  get  anybod)  else 
to  agree  with  him.  And  I  liked  it  too,  if  you  won't  think 
it  dreadfully  presumptuous  of  a  girl  to  say  so.  I  thought 
it  took  such  a  grand,  beautiful,  etheral  point  of  view,  all 
up  in  the  clouds,  you  know,  with  no  horrid  earthly  mate- 
rialism or  nonsense  of  any  sort  to  clog  and  spoil  it.  I 
think  it  was  splendid,  all  that  you  said  about  its  being 
treason  to  the  race  to  take  account  of  wealth  or  position, 
or  prospects  or  connections,  or  any  other  worldly  consid- 
eration, in  choosing  a  husband  or  wife  for  one's  self — and 
that  one  ought  rather  to  be  guided  by  instinct  alone, 
because  instinct — or  love,  as  we  call  it — was  the  voice  of 
nature  speaking  within  us. — Papa  said  that  was  beautifully 
put.  And  I  thought  it  was  really  true  as  well.  I  thought 
it  was  just  what  a  great  prophet  would  have  said  if  he  were 

alive  to  say  it;  and  that  the  man  who  wrote  it "    She 

paused,  breathless,  partly  because  she  was  quite  abashed 
by  this  time  at  her  own  temerity,  and  partly  because  Hugh 
Massinger,  wicked  man!    was  actually  smiling  a  covert, 
smile  through  the  corners  of  his  mouth  at  her  youthful 
enthusiasm. 

The  pause  sobered  him.  "Miss  Meysey,"  he  broke  in, 
with  unwonted  earnestness,  and  with  a  certain  strange 
tinge  of  subdued  melancholy  in  his  tremulous  voice,  "I 
didn't  mean  to  laugh  at  you.  I  really  believe  it.  I  believe 
in  my  heart  every  single  word  of  what  I  said  there.  I 
believe  a  man — or  a  woman  either — ought  to  choose  in 
marriage  just  the  one  other  special  person  toward  whom 
their  own  hearts  inevitably  lead  them.  I  believe  it  all — I 
believe  it  without  reserve.  Money  or  rank,  or  connection 
or  position,  should  be  counted  as  nothing.  We  should 
go  simply  where  nature  leads  us;  and  nature  will  never 
lead  us  astray.  For  nature  is  merely  another  name  for 
the  will  of  heaven  made  clear  within  us." 


78  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

Ingenuous  youth  blushed  itself  crimson.  "I  believe  so 
too,"  the  timid  girl  answered  in  a  very  low  voice  and  with 
a  heaving  bosom. 

He  looked  her  through  and  through  with  his  large  dark 
eyes.  She  shrank  and  fluttered  before  his  searching 
glance.  Should  he  put  out  a  velvet  paw  for  his  mouse 
now,  or  should  he  play  with  it  artistically  a  little  longer? 
Too  much  precipitancy  spoils  the  fun.  Better  wait  till  the 
"Echoes  from  Callimachus''  had  arrived.  They  were  very 
/etching.  And  then,  besides — besides,  he  was  not  entirely 
\vithout  a  conscience.  A  man  should  think  neither  of 
ivealth  nor  of  position,  nor  prospects  nor  connections,  in 
choosing  himself  a  partner  for  life.  His  own  heart  led 
him  straight  toward  Elsie,  not  toward  Winifred.  Could 
he  turn  his  back  upon  it,  with  those  words  on  his  lips,  and 
trample  poor  Elsie's  tender  heart  under  foot  ruthlessly? 
Principle  demanded  it;  but  he  had  not  the  strength  of 
mind  to  follow  principle  at  that  precise  moment.  He 
looked  long  and  deep  into  Winifred's  eyes.  They  were 
pretty  blue  eyes,  though  pale  and  mawkish  by  the  side  of 
Elsie's.  Then  he  said  with  a  sudden  downcast,  half-awk- 
ward glance — that  consummate  actor — "I  think  we  ought 
to  go  back  to  your  mother  now,  Miss  Meysey." 

Winifred  sighed.  Not  yet!  Not  yet!  But  he  had  looked 
at  her  hard !  he  had  fluttered  and  trembled !  He  was  sum- 
moning up  courage.  She  felt  sure  of  that.  He  didn't 
venture  as  yet  to  assault  her  openly.  Still,  she  was  certain 
he  did  really  like  her;  just  a  little  bit,  if  only  a  little. 

Next  morning,  as  she  strolled  along  on  the  lawn,  a 
village  boy  in  a  corduroy  suit  came  lounging  up  from  the 
inn,  in  rustic  insouciance,  with  a  small  parcel  dangling 
by  a  string  from  his  little  finger.  She  knew  the  boy,  and 
called  him  quickly  toward  her.  "Dick,"  she  cried,"  what's 
that  you've  got  there?" 

The  boy  handed  it  to  her  with  a  mysterious  nod.  "It's 
for  you,  miss,"  he  said,  in  his  native  Suffolk,  screwing  up 
his  face  sideways  into  a  most  excruciating  pantomimic 
expression  of  the  profoundest  secrecy.  "The  gentleman 
at  our  house — him  wooth  the  black  moostash,  ye  know — 
he  towd  me  to  give  it  to  yow,  into  yar  own  hands,  he  say, 
if  I  could  manage  to  ketch  ye  aloon  anyhow.  He  fared 


THE  ROADS  DIVIDE.  79 

partickler  about  yar  own  hands.  I  heen't  got  to  wait,  cos 
he  say,  there  oon't  be  noo  answer." 

Winifred  tore  the  packet  open  with  trembling  hands. 
It  was  a  neat  little  volume,  in  a  dainty  delicate  sage-green 
cover — "Echoes  from  Callimachus,  and  other  Poems;" 
by  Hugh  Massinger,  sometimes  Fellow  of  Oriel  College, 
Oxford.  She  turned  at  once  with  a  flutter  from  the  title- 
page  to  the  fly-leaf:  "A  Mile.  Winifred  Meysey;  Hom- 
mage  de  1'ateur."  She  only  waited  a  moment  to  slip  a 
shilling  into  Dick's  hand,  and  then  rushed  up,  all  crimson 
with  delight,  into  her  own  bedroom.  Twice  she  pressed 
the  flimsy  little  sage-green  volume  in  an  ecstasy  to  her 
lips;  then  she  laid  it  hastily  in  the  bottom  of  a  drawer, 
under  a  careless  pile  of  handkerchiefs  and  lace  bodices. 
She  wouldn't  tell  even  Elsie  of  that  tardy  much-prized 
birthday  gift.  No  one  but  herself  must  ever  know  Hugh 
Massinger  had  sent  her  his  volume,  of  poems. 

When  Dick  returned  to  the  inn,  ten  minutes  later,  en- 
vironed in  a  pervading  odor  of  peppermint,  the  indirect 
result  of  Winifred  Meysey's  shilling,  Hugh  called  him  in 
lazily  with  his  quiet  authoritative  air  to  the  prim  little 
parlor,  and  asked  him  in  an  undertone  to  whom  he  had 
given  the  precious  parcel. 

"To  the  young  lady  herself,"  Dick  answered  confiden- 
tially, thrusting  the  bull's-eye  with  his  tongue  into  his 
pouched  cheek.  "I  give  it  to  har  behind  the  laylacs,  too, 
where  noo'one  coon't  see  us." 

"Dick,"  Hugh  Massinger  said,  in  a  profoundly  persua- 
sive and  sententious  voice,  laying  his  hand  magisterially 
on  the  boy's  shoulder,  "you're  a  sharp  lad;  and  if  you 
develop  your  talents  steadily  in  this  direction,  you  may 
rise  in  time  from  the  distinguished  post  of  gentleman's 
gentleman  to  be  a  private  detective  or  confidential  agent, 
with  an  office  of  your  own  at  the  top  of  Regent  Street. 
Dick,  say  nothing  about  this  on  any  account,  to  anybody; 
and  there,  my  boy — there's  half  a  crown  for  you." 

"The  young  lady  ha'  gin  me  one  shillen  a'ready,"  Dick 
replied  with  alacrity,  pocketing  the  coin  with  a  broad  grin. 
Business  was  brisk  indeed  this  morning. 

"The  young  lady  was  well  advised,"  Hugh  answered 
grimly.  "They're  cheap  at  the  price — dirt  cheap,  I  call  it, 


gO  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

those  immortal  poems— with  an  autograph  inscription  by 
the  bard  in  person.— And  I've  done  a  good  stroke  of  busi- 
ness myself  too.  The  'Echoes  from  Callimachus'  are  a 
capital  landing-net.  If  they  don't  succeed  in  bringing  her 
out/ all  napping,  on  the  turf,  gaffed  and  done  for,  a  pretty 
speckled  prey,  why,  no  angler  on  earth  that  ever  fished 
for  women  will  get  so  much  as  a  tiny  rise  out  of  her. — It's 
a  very  fair  estate  still,  is  Whitestrand.  Taris  vaut  bien 
une  messe,'  said  Henri.  I  must  make  some  little 
sacrifices  myself  if  I  want  to  conquer  Whitestrand  fair  and 
even." 

"Paris  vaut  bien  une  messe,"  indeed.    Was  Whitestrand 
worth  sacrificing  Elsie  Challoner's  heart  for? 


CHAPTER  IX. 

HIGH-WATER. 

Meanwhile,  Warren  Relf,  navigating  the  pervasive  and 
ubiquitous  little  "Mud-Turtle,"  had  spent  his  summer 
congenially  in  cruising  in  and  out  of  Essex  mud-flats  and 
Norfolk  broads,  accompanied  by  his  friend  and  chum 
Potts,  the  marine  painter — now  lying  high  and  dry  with 
the  ebbing  tide  on  some  broad  bare  bank  of  ribbed  sand, 
just  relieved  by  a  battle-royal  of  gulls  and  rooks  from  the 
last  reproach  of  utter  monotony;  now  working  hard  at 
'the  counterfeit  presentment  of  a  green-grown  wreck,  all 
picturesque  with  waving  tresses  of  weed  and  sea-wrack, 
in  some  stranded  estuary  of  the  Thames  backwaters ;  and 
now  again  tossing  and  lopping  on  the  uneasy  bosom  of 
the  German  Ocean,  whose  rise  and  fall  would  seem  to 
suggest  to  a  casual  observer's  mind  the  physiological 
notion  that  its  own  included  crabs  and  lobsters  had  given 
it  a  prolonged  and  serious  fit  of  marine  indigestion.  For 
a  couple  of  months  at  a  stretch  the  two  young  artists  had 
toiled  away  ceaselessly  at  their  labor  of  love,  painting  the 
sea  itself  and  all  that  therein  is,  with  the  eyots,  creeks, 
rivers,  sands,  cliffs,  banks,  and  inlets  adjacent,  in  every 
variety  of  mood  or  feature,  from  its  glassiest  calm  to  its 


HIGH-WATER.  81 

angriest  tempest,  with  endless  patience,  delight,  and  sat- 
isfaction. They  enjoyed  their  work,  and  their  work  repaid 
them.  It  was  almost  all  the  payment  they  ever  got,  indeed, 
for,  like  loyal  sons  of  the  Cheyne  Row  Club,  the  crew  of 
the  "Mud-Turtle"  were  not  successful.  And  now,  as  Sep- 
tember was  more  than  half  through,  Warren  Relf  began 
to  bethink  him  at  last  of  Hugh  Massinger,  whom  he  had 
left  in  rural  ease  on  dry  land  at  Whitestrand  under  a  gen- 
eral promise  to  return  for  liim  "in  the  month  of  the  long 
decline  of  roses,"  some  time  between  the  I5th  and  the 
2Oth.  So,  on  a  windy  morning,  about  that  precise  period 
of  the  year,  with  a  northeasterly  breeze  setting  strong 
across  the  North  Sea,  and  a  falling  barometer  threatening 
squalls,  according  to  the  printed  weather  report,  he  made 
his  way  out  of  the  mouth  of  the  Yare,  and  turned  south- 
ward before  the  flowing  tide  in  the  direction  of  White- 
strand. 

The  sea  was  running  high  and  splendid,  and  the  two 
young  painters,  inured  to  toil  and  accustomed  to  danger, 
thoroughly  enjoyed  its  wild  magnificence.  A  storm  to 
them  was  a  study  in  action.  They  could  take  notes  calmly 
of  its  fiercest  moments.  Almost  every  wave  broke  over 
the  deck;  and  the  patient  little  "Mud-Turtle,"  with  her 
flat  bottom  and  center-board  keel,  tossed  about  like  a 
walnut  shell  on  the  surface  of  the  water,  or  drove  her 
nose  madly  from  time  to  time  into  the  crest  of  a  billow, 
to  emerge  triumphantly  one  moment  later,  all  shining 
and  dripping  with  sticky  brine,  in  the  deep  trough  on  the 
other  side.  Painting  in  such  a  sea  was  of  course  simply 
impossible;  but  Warren  Relf,  who  loved  his  art  with 
supreme  devotion,  and  never  missed  an  opportunity  of 
catching  a  hint  from  his  ever-changing  model  under  the 
most  unpromising  circumstances,  took  out  pencil  ^nd 
paper  a  dozen  times  in  the  course  of  the  day  to  preserve 
at  least  in  black  and  white  some  passing  aspect  of  her 
mutable  features.  Potts  for  the  most  part  managed  sheet 
and  helm ;  while  Relf,  in  the  intervals  of  luffing  or  tacking, 
holding  hard  to  the  mainmast  with  his  left  arm,  and  with 
the  left  hand  just  grasping  his  drawing-pad  on  the  other 
side  of  the  mast,  jotted  hastily  down  with  his  right  what- 
ever peculiar  form  of  spray  or  billow  happened  for  the 


82  *HIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

moment  to  catch  and  impress  his  artistic  fancy.  It  was  a 
glorious  day  for  those  who  liked  it:  though  a  landlubber 
would  no  doubt  have  roundly  called  it  a  frightful  voyage. 

They  had  meant  to  make  Whitestrand  before  evening; 
but  half-way  down,  an  incident  of  a  sort  that  Warren  Relf 
could  never  bear  to  pass  intervened  to  delay  them.  They 
fell  in  casually  with  a  North  Sea  trawler,  disabled  and 
distressed  by  last  night's  gale,  now  scudding  under  bare 
poles  before  the  free  breeze,  that  churned  and  whitened 
the  entire  surface  of  the  German  Ocean.  The  men  on  board 
were  in  sore  straits,  though  not  as  yet  in  immediate  dan- 
ger; and  the  yawl  gallantly  stood  in  close  by  her,  to  pick 
up  the  swimmers  in  case  of  serious  accident.  The  shrill 
wind  tore  at  the  mainmast;  the  waves  charged  her  in 
vague  ranks ;  the  gaff  quivered  and  moaned  at  the  shocks ; 
and  ever  and  anon,  with  a  bellowing  rush,  the  resistless 
sea  swept  over  her  triumphantly  from  stem  to  stern.  Mean- 
while, Warren  Relf,  eager  to  fix  this  stray  episode  on  good 
white  paper  while  it  was  still  before  his  eyes,  made  wild 
and  rapid  dashes  on  his  pad  with  a  sprawling  hand,  which 
conveyed  to  his  mind,  in  strange  shorthand  hieroglyphics, 
some  faint  idea  of  the  scene  as  it  passed  before  him. 

"She's  a  terrible  bad  sitter,  this  smack,"  he  observed  in 
a  loud  voice  to  Potts,  with  good-humored  enthusiasm,  as 
they  held  together  with  struggling  hands  on  the  deck  of 
the  "Mud-Turtle."  "The  moment  you  think  you've  just 
caught  her  against  the  skyline  on  the  crest  of  a  wave,  she 
lurches  again,  and  over  she  goes,  plump  down  into  the 
trough,  before  you've  had  a  chance  to  make  a  single  mark 
upon  your  sheet  of  paper.  Ships  are  always  precious 
bad  sitters  at  the  best  of  times;  but  when  you  and  your 
model  are  both  plunging  and  tossing  together  in  dirty 
weather  on  a  loppy  channel,  I  don't  believe  even  Turner 
himself  could  make  much  out  of  it  in  the  way  of  a  sketcll 
from  nature — Hold  hard,  there,  Frank!  Look  out  for 
your  head!  She's  going  to  ship  a  thundering  big  sea 
across  her  bows  this  very  minute. — By  jove!  I  wonder 
how  the  smack  stood  that  last  high  wave! — Is  she  gone? 
Did  it  break  over  her?  Can  you  see  her  ahead  there?" 

"She's  all  right  still,"  Potts  shouted  from  the  bow,  where 
he  stood  now  in  his  oilskin  suit,  drenched  from  head  to 


HIGH-WATER.  8S 

foot  with  the  dashing  spray,  but  cneery  as  ever,  in  true 
sailor  fashion.  "I  can  see  her  mast  just  showing  above  the 
crest.  But  it  must  have  given  her  a  jolly  good  wetting. 
Shall  we  signal  the  men  to  know  if  they'd  like  to  come 
aboard  here?" 

"Signal  away,"  Warren  Relf  answered  good-hum oredly 
above  the  noise  of  the  wind.  "No  more  sketching  for  me 
to-day,  I  take  it.  The  last  lot  she  shipped  wet  my  pad 
through  and  through  with  the  nasty  damp  brine.  I'd 
better  put  my  sketch,  as  far  as  it  goes,  down  below  in  the 
locker.  Wind's  freshening.  We'll  have  enough  to  do  to 
keep  her  nose  straight  in  half  a  gale  like  this.  We're 
going  within  four  or  five  points  of  the  wind  now,  as  it  is. 
I  wish  we  could  run  clear  ahead  at  once  for  the  poplar  at 
Whitestrand.  I  would,  too,  if  it  weren't  for  the  smack. 
This  is  getting  every  bit  as  hot  as  I  like  it.  But  we  must 
keep  an  eye  upon  her,  if  we  don't  want  her  crew  to  be  all 
dead  men.  She  can't  live  six  hours  longer  in  a  gale  like 
to-day's,  I'll  bet  you  any  money." 

They  signaled  the  men,  but  found  them  unwilling  still, 
with  true  seafaring  devotion,  to  abandon  their  ship,  which 
had  yet  some  hours  of  life  left  in  her.  They'd  stick  to  the 
smack,  the  skipper  signaled  back  in  mute  pantomime, 
as  long  as  her  timbers  held  out  the  water.  There  was 
nothing  for  it,  therefore,  but  to  lie  hard  by  her,  for  human- 
ity's sake,  as  close  as  possible,  and  to  make  as  slowly  as  the 
strength  of  the  wind  would  allow,  by  successive  tacks, 
for  the  river-mouth  at  Whitestrand. 

All  day  long,  they  held  up  bravely,  lurching  and  plung- 
ing on  the  angry  waves;  and  only  toward  evening  did 
they  part  company  with  the  toiling  smack,  as  it  was  grow- 
ing dusk  along  the  low  flat  stretch  of  shore  by  Dunwich. 
There,  a  fish-carrier  from  the  North  Sea,  one  of  those 
fast  long  steamers  that  plow  the  German  Ocean  on  the 
lookout  for  the  fishing  fleet — whose  catches  they  take  up 
with  all  speed  to  the  London  market,  fell  in  with  them  in 
the  very  nick  of  time,  and  transferring  the  crew  on  board 
with  some  little  difficulty,  made  fast  the  smack — or  rather 
her  wreck — with  a  towline  behind,  and  started  under  all 
steam  to  save  her  life  for  the  port  of  Harwich.  Warren 
Relf  and  his  companion,  despising  such  aid,  and  prefer- 


84  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

ring  to  live  it  out  by  themselves  at  all  hazards,  were  left 
behind  alone  with  the  wild  evening,  and  proceeded  in  the 
growing  shades  of  twilight  to  find  their  way  up  the  river 
at  Whitestrand. 

"Can  you  make  out  the  poplar,  Frank?"  Warren  Relf 
shouted  out,  as  he  peered  ahead  into  the  deep  gloom  that 
enveloped  the  coast  with  its  murky  covering.  "We've  left 
it  rather  late,  I'm  afraid,  for  pushing  up  the  creek  with  a 
sea  like  this!  Unless  we  can  spot  the  poplar  distinctly, 
I  should  hardly  like  to  risk  entering  it  by  the  red  light  on 
the  sandhills  alone.  Those  must  be  the  lamps  at  White- 
strand  Hall,  the  three  windows  to  starboard  yonder.  The 
poplar  ought  to  show  by  rights  a  point  or  so  west  of 
them,  with  the  striped  buoy  just  a  little  this  side  of  it." 

"I  can  make  out  the  striped  buoy  by  the  white  paint  on 
it,"  his  companion  answered,  gazing  eagerly  in  front  of 
him ;  "but  I  fancy  it's  a  shade  too  dark  now  to  be  sure  of 
the  poplar.  The  lights  of  the  Hall  don't  seem  quite  reg- 
ular. Still,  I  should  think  we  could  make  the  creek  by  the 
red  lantern  and  the  beacon  at  the  hithe,  without  minding 
the  tree,  if  you  care  to  risk  it.  You  know  your  \vay  up 
and  down  the  river  as  well  as  any  man  living  by  this  time ; 
and  we've  got  a  fair  breeze  at  our  backs,  you  see,  for  going 
up  the  mouth  to  the  bend  at  Whitestrand." 

The  wind  moaned  like  a  woman  in  agony.  The  timbers 
creaked  and  groaned  and  crackled.  The  black  waves 
lashed  savagely  over  the  deck.  The  "Mud-Turtle"  was 
almost  on  the  shore  before  they  knew  it. 

"Luff,  Luff!"  Relf  called  out  hastily,  as  he  peered  once 
more  into  the  deepening  gloom  with  all  his  eyes.  "By 
George !  we're  wrong.  I  can  see  the  poplar — over  yonder; 
do  you  catch  it?  We're  out  of  our  bearings  a  quarter  of 
a  mile.  We've  gone  too  far  now  to  make  it  this  tack.  We 
must  try  again,  and  get  our  points  better  by  the  high  light. 
That  was  a  narrow  squeak  of  it,  by  Jove!  Frank.  I  can 
twig  where  we've  got  to  now,  distinctly.  It's  the  lights 
in  the  house  that  led  us  astray.  That's  not  the  Hall;  it's 
the  windows  of  the  vicarage." 

They  ran  out  to  eastward  again,  for  more  sea-room,  a 
couple  of  hundred  yards,  or  farther,  and  tacked  afresh 
for  the  entrance  of  the  creek,  this  time  adjusting  their 


HIGH-WATER.  85 

course  better  for  the  open  mouth  by  the  green  lamp  of 
the  beacon  on  the  sandhills.  The  light  fixed  on  their  own 
masthead  threw  a  glimmering  ray  ahead  from  time  to  time 
upon  the  angry  water.  It  was  a  hard  fight  for  mastery 
with  the  wind.  The  waves  were  setting  in  fierce  and 
strong  toward  the  creek  now;  but  the  tide  and  stream  on 
the  other  hand  were  ebbing  rapidly  and  steadily  outward. 
They  always  ebbed  fast  at  the  turn  of  the  tide,  as  Relf  knew 
well:  a  rushing  current  set  in  then  round  the  corner  by 
the  poplar  tree,  the  same  current  that  had  carried  out 
Hugh  Massinger  so  resistlessly  seaward  in  that  little  ad- 
venture of  his  on  the  morning  of  their  first  arrival  at 
Whitestrand.  Only  an  experienced  mariner  dare  face  that 
bar.  But  Warren  Relf  was  accustomed  to  the  coast,  and 
made  light  of  the  danger  that  other  men  would  have 
trembled  at. 

As  they  neared  the  poplar  a  second  time,  making 
straight  for  the  mouth  with  nautical  dexterity,  a  pale  ob- 
ject on  the  port  bow,  rising  and  falling  with  each  rise  or 
fall  of  the  waves  on  the  bar,  attracted  Warren  Relf's  casual 
attention  for  a  single  moment  by  its  strange  weird  likeness 
to  a  human  figure.  At  first,  he  hardly  regarded  the  thing 
seriously  as  anything  more  than  a  bit  of  floating  wreckage ; 
but  presently,  the  light  from  the  masthead  fell  full  upon  it, 
and  with  a  sudden  flash  he  felt  convinced  at  once  it  was 
something  stranger  than  a  mere  plank  or  fragment  of 
rigging. 

"Look  yonder,  Frank,"  he  called  out  in  echoing  tones 
to  his  mate;  "that  can't  be  a  buoy  upon  the  port  bow 
there!" 

The  other  man  looked  at  it  long  and  steadily.  As  he 
looked,  the  "Mud-Turtle"  lurched  once  more,  and  cast 
a  reflected  pencil  ray  of  light  from  the  masthead  lamp 
over  the  surface  of  the  sea,  away  in  the  direction  of  the 
suspicious  object.  Both  men  caught  sight  at  once  of  some 
floating  white  drapery,  swayed  by  the  waves,  and  a  pale 
face  upturned  in  ghastly  silence  to  the  uncertain  starlight, 

"Port  your  helm  hard;"  Relf  cried  in  haste.  "It's  a 
man  overboard.  Washed  off  the  smack  perhaps.  He's 
drowned  by  this  time,  I  expect,  poor  fellow." 

His  companion  ported  the  helm  at  the  word  with  all  his 


86  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

might  The  yawl  answered  well  in  spite  of  the  breakers. 
With  great  difficulty,  between  wind  and  tide,  they  lay  up 
toward  the  mysterious  thing  slowly  in  the  very  trough  of 
the  billows  that  roared  and  danced  with  hoarse  joy  over 
the  shallow  bar;  and  Relf,  holding  tight  to  the  sheet  with 
one  hand,  and  balancing  himself  as  well  as  he  was  able  on 
the  deck,  reached  out  with  the  other  a  stout  boathook 
to  draw  the  tossing  body  alongside  within  hauling  distance 
of  the  "Mud-Turtle."  As  he  did  so,  the  body,  eluding  his 
grasp,  rose  once  more  on  the  crest  of  the  wave,  and  dis- 
played to  their  view  an  open  bosom  and  a  long  white  dress, 
with  a  floating  scarf  or  shawl  of  some  thin  material  still 
hanging  loose  around  the  neck  and  shoulders.  The  face 
itself  they  couldn't  as  yet  distinguish ;  it  fell  back  languid 
beneath, the  spray  at  the  top,  so  that  only  the  throat  and 
chin  were  visible;  but  by  the  dress  and  the  open  bosom 
alone,  it  was  clear  at  once  that  the  object  they  saw  was 
not  the  corpse  of  a  sailor.  Warren  Relf  almost  let  drop  the 
boathook  in  horror  and  surprise. 

"Great  heavens!"  he  exclaimed,  turning  round  excited- 
ly, "it's  a  woman — a  lady — dead — in  the  water!'' 

The  billow  broke,  and  curled  over  majestically  with 
resistless  force  into  the  trough  below  them.  Its  undertow 
sucked  the  "Mud-Turtle"  after  it  fiercely  toward  the  shore, 
away  from  the  body.  With  a  violent  effort,  Warren  Relf, 
lunging  forward  eagerly  at  the  lurch,  seized  hold  of  the 
corpse  by  the  floating  scarf.  It  turned  of  itself  as  the  hook 
caught  it,  and  displayed  its  face  in  the  pale  starlight.  A 
great  awe  fell  suddenly  upon  the  astonished  young  paint- 
er's mind.  It  was  indeed  a  woman  that  he  held  now  by  the 
dripping  hair — a  beautiful  young  girl,  in  a  white  dress; 
and  the  wan  face  was  one  he  had  seen  before.  Even  in 
that  dim  half-light  he  recognized  her  instantly. 

"Frank!"  he  cried  out  in  a  voice  of  hushed  and  reverent 
surprise — "never  mind  the  ship.  Come  forward  and  help 
me.  We  must  take  her  on  board.  I  know  her!  I  know 
her!  She's  a  friend  of  Massinger's." 

The  corpse  was  one  of  the  two  young  girls  he  had  seen 
that  day  two  months  before  sitting  with  their  arms  round 
one  another's  waists,  close  to  the  very  spot  where  they  now 
lay  up,  on  the  gnarled  and  naked  roots  of  the  famous  old 
poplar. 


SHUFFLING  IT  OFF.  87 

CHAPTER  X. 

SHUFFLING  IT  OFF. 

The  day  had  been  an  eventful  one  for  Hugh  Massinger: 
the  most  eventful  and  pregnant  of  his  whole  history.  As 
long  as  he  lived,  he  could  never  possibly  forget  it.  It  was 
indeed  a  critical  turning-point  for  three  separate  lives — 
his  own,  and  Elsie's,  and  Winifred  Meysey's.  For,  as 
Hugh  had  walked  that  morning,  stick  in  hand  and 
orchid  in  buttonhole,  down  the  rose-embowered  lane  in 
the  Squire's  grounds  with  Winifred,  he  had  asked  the 
frightened,  blushing  girl,  in  simple  and  straight-forward 
language,  without  any  preliminary,  to  become  his  wife. 
His  shy  fish  was  fairly  hooked  at  last,  he  thought  now: 
no  need  for  daintily  playing  his  catch  any  longer;  it  was 
but  a  question,  as  things  stood,  of  reel  and  of  landing-net. 
The  father  and  mother,  those  important  accessories,  were 
pretty  safe  in  their  way  too.  He  had  sounded  them  both 
by  unobtrusive  methods,  with  dexterous  plummets  of 
oblique  inquiry,  and  had  gauged  their  profoundest  depths 
of  opinion  with  tolerable  accuracy,  as  to  settlements  and 
other  ante-nuptial  precontracts  of  marriage.  For  what 
is  the  use  of  catching  an  heiress  on  your  own  rod,  if  your 
heiress'  parents,  upon  whose  testamentary  disposition  in 
the  last  resort  her  entire  market  value  really  depends,  look 
askance  with  eyes  of  obvious  disfavor  upon  your  personal 
pretensions  as  their  future  son-in-law?  Hugh  Massinger 
was  keen  enough  sportsman  in  his  own  line  to  make  quite 
sure  of  his  expected  game  before  irrevocably  committing 
himself  to  duck-shot  cartridge.  He  was  confident  he 
knew  his  ground  now ;  so,  with  a  bold  face  and  a  modest 
assurance,  he  ventured,  in  a  few  plain  and  well-chosen 
words,  to  commend  his  suit,  his  hand,  and  his  heart  to 
Winifred  Meysey's  favorable  attention. 

It  was  a  great  sacrifice,  and  he  felt  it  as  such.  He  was 
positively  throwing  himself  away  upon  Winifred.  If  he 
had  followed  his  own  crude  inclinations  alone,  like  a 
romantic  schoolboy,  he  would  have  waited  forever  and 


88  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

ever  for  his  cousin  Elsie.  Elsie  was  indeed  the  one  true 
love  of  his  youth.  He  had  always  loved  her  and  he 
would  always  love  her.  Twas  foolish,  perhaps, 
to  indulge  overmuch  in  these  personal  preferences, 
but  after  all  it  was  very  human;  and  Hugh 
acknowledged  regretfully  in  his  own  heart  that  he  was 
not  entirely  raised  in  that  respect  above  the  average  level 
of  human  weaknesses.  Still,  a  man,  however  humanesque, 
must  not  be  governed  by  impulse  alone.  He  must  judge 
calmly,  deliberately,  impersonally,  disinterestedly  of  his 
own  future,  and  must  act  for  the  best  in  the  long-run  by 
the  light  of  his  own  final  and  judicial  opinion.  Now, 
Winifred  was  without  doubt  a  very  exceptional  and  eligible 
chance  for  a  briefless  barrister;  your  sucking  poet  doesn't 
get  such  chances  of  an  undisputed  heiress  every  day  of  the 
week,  you  may  take  your  affidavit.  If  he  let  her  slip  by 
on  sentimental'  grounds,  and  waited  for  Elsie — poor,  dear 
old  Elsie — heaven  only  knew  how  long  they  might  both 
have  to  wait  for  one  another — and  perhaps  even  then  be 
finally  disappointed.  It  was  a  foolish  dream  on  Elsie's 
part;  for,  to  say  the  truth,  he  himself  had  never  seriously 
entertained  it.  The  most  merciful  thing  to  Elsie  herself 
would  be  to  snap  it  short  now,  once  for  all,  before  things 
went  farther,  and  let  her  stand  face  to  face  with  naked 
facts:  ah,  how  hideously  naked! — let  her  know  she  must 
either  look  out  .another  husband  somewhere  for  herself, 
or  go  on  earning  her  own  livelihood  in  maiden  meditation, 
fancy  free,  for  the  remaining  term  of  her  natural  exist- 
ence. Hugh  could  never  help  ending  up  a  subject,  how- 
ever unpleasant,  even  in  his  own  mind,  with  a  poetical 
tag:  it  was  a  trick  of  manner  his  soul  had  caught  from 
the  wonted  peroration  of  his  political  leaders  in  the  first 
editorial  column  of  that  exalted  print,  the  "Morning  Tele- 
phone." So  he  made  up  his  mind;  and  he  proposed  to 
Winifred. 

The  girl's  heart  gave  a  sudden  bound,  and  the  red  blood 
flushed  her  somewhat  pallid  cheeks  with  hasty  roses  as  she 
.  listened  to  Hugh's  graceful  and  easy  avowal  of  the  pro- 
found and  unfeigned  love  that  he  proffered  her.  She 
thought  of  the  poem  Hugh  had  read  her  aloud  in  his 
sonorous  tones  the  evening  before — much  virtue  in  a 


SHUFFLING  IT  OFF.  89 

judiciously  selected  passage  of  poetry,  well  marked  in 
delivery : 

"  'He  does  not  love  me  for  my  birth, 

Nor  for  my  lands  so  broad  and  fair: 
He  loves  me  for  my  own  true  worth, 
And  that  is  well,'  said  Lady  Clare." 

That  was  how  Hugh  Massinger  loved  her,  she  was  quite 
sure.  Had  he  not  trembled  and  hesitated  to  ask  her? 
Her  bosom  fluttered  with  a  delicious  fluttering;  but  she 
cast  her  eyes  down,  and  answered  nothing  for  a  brief 
space.  Then  her  heart  gave  her  courage  to  look  up  once 
more,  and  to  murmur  back,  in  answer  to  his  pleading 
look:  "Hugh,  I  love  you."  And  Hugh,  carried  away 
not  ungracefully  by  the  impulse  of  the  moment,  felt  his 
own  heart  thrill  responsive  to  hers  in  real  earnest,  and  in 
utter  temporary  forgetfulness  of  poor  betrayed  and 
abandoned  Elsie.  They  walked  back  to  the  Hall  together 
next  minute,  whispering  low,  in  the  fool's  paradise  of  first 
young  love — a  fool's  paradise,  indeed,  for  those  two  poor 
lovers,  whose  wooing  set  out  under  such  evil  auspices. 

But  when  Hugh  had  left  his  landed  prey  at  the  front 
door  of  the  square-built  manor-house,  and  strolled  off  by 
himself  toward  the  village  inn,  the  difficulty  about  Elsie 
for  the  first  time  began  to  stare  him  openly  in  the  face 
in  all  its  real  and  horrid  magnitude.  He  would  have  to 
confess  and  to  explain  to  Elsie.  Worst  still,  for  a  man 
of  his  mettle  and  his  sensitiveness,  he  would  have  to 
apologize  for  and  excuse  his  own  conduct.  That  was 
unendurable — that  was  ignominious — that  was  even  ab- 
surd. His  virility  kicked  at  it.  There  is  something  essen- 
tially insulting  and  degrading  to  one's  manhood  in  having 
to  tell  a  girl  you've  pretended  to  love,  that  you  really  and 
truly  don't  love  her — that  you  only  care  for  her  in  a 
sisterly  fashion.  It  is  practically  to  unsex  one's  self.  A 
pretty  girl  appeals  quite  otherwise  to  the  man  that  is  in  us. 
Hugh  felt  it  bitterly  and  deeply — for  himself,  not  for 
Elsie.  He  pitied  his  own  sad  plight  most  sincerely.  But 
then,  there  was  poor  Elsie  to  think  of  too.  No  use  in  the 
world  in  blinking  that.  Elsie  loved  him  very,  very  dearly. 
True,  they  had  never  been  engaged  to  one  another — so 
great  is  the  love  of  consistency  in  man,  that  even  alone  in 


90  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

his  own  mind  Hugh  continued  to  hug  that  translucent 
fiction ;  but  she  had  been  very  fond  of  him,  undeniably 
fond  of  him,  and  he  had  perhaps  from  time  to  time,  by 
overt  acts,  unduly  encouraged  the  display  of  her  fondness. 
It  gratified  his  vanity  and  his  sense  of  his  own  power  over 
women  to  do  so;  he  could  make  them  love  him — 
few  men  more  easily — and  he  liked  to  exercise  that  dan- 
gerous faculty  on  every  suitable  subject  that  flitted  across 
his  changeful  horizon.  The  man  with  a  mere  passion  for 
making  conquests  affords  no  serious  menace  to  the  world's 
happiness;  but  the  man  with  an  innate  gift  for  calling 
forth  wherever  he  goes  all  the  deepest  and  truest  instincts 
of  a  woman's  nature  is — when  he  abuses  his  power — the 
most  deadly,  terrible,  and  cruel  creature  known  in  our 
age  to  civilized  humanity.  And  yet  he  is  not  always 
deliberately  cruel;  sometimes,  as  in  Hugh  Massinger's 
case,  he  almost  believes  himself  to  be  good  and  innocent. 

He  had  warned  Winifred  to  whisper  nothing  for  the 
present  to  Elsie  about  this  engagement  of  theirs.  Elsie 
was  his  cousin,  he  said — his  only  relation — and  he  would 
dearly  like  to  tell  her  the  secret  of  his  heart  himself  in 
private.  He  would  see  her  that  evening  and  break  the 
news  to  her.  "Why  break  it?"  Winifred  had  asked  in 
doubt,  all  unconscious.  And  Hugh,  a  strange  suppressed 
smile  playing  uneasily  about  the  corners  of  his  thin  lips, 
had  answered  with  guileless  alacrity  of  speech:  "Because 
Elsie's  like  a  sister  to  me,  you  know,  Winifred ;  and  sisters 
always  to  some  extent  resent  the  bare  idea  of  their  broth- 
ers marrying." 

For  as  yet  Elsie  herself  suspected  nothing.  It  was 
best,  Hugh  thought,  she  should  suspect  nothing.  That 
was  a  cardinal  point  in  his  easy-going  practical  philosophy 
of  life.  He  never  went  half-way  to  meet  trouble.  Till 
Winifred  had  accepted  him,  why  worry  poor  dear  Elsie's 
gentle  little  soul  with  what  was,  after 'all,  a  mere  remote 
chance,  a  contingent  possibility?  He  would  first  make 
quite  sure,  by  actual  trial,  where  he  stood  with  Winifred ; 
and  then— and  then,  like  a  thunderbolt  from  a  clear  sky, 
he  might  let  the  whole  truth  burst  in  full  force  at  once 
upon  poor  lonely  Elsie's  devoted  head.  Meanwhile,  with 
extraordinary  cleverness  and  care,  he  continued  to  dis- 


SHUFFLING  IT  OFF.  91 

semble.  He  never  made  open  love  to  Winifred  before 
Elsie's  face ;  on  the  contrary,  he  kept  the  whole  small  com- 
edy of  his  relations  with  Winifred  so  skillfully  concealed 
from  her  feminine  eyes,  that  to  the  very  last  moment  Elsie 
never  even  dreamt  of  her  pretty  pupil  as  a  possible  rival,  or 
regarded  her  in  any  other  conceivable  light  than  as  the 
nearest  of  friends  and  the  dearest  of  sisters.  Whenever 
Hugh  spoke  of  Winifred  to  Elsie  at  all,  he  spoke  of  her 
lightly,  almost  slightingly,  as  a  nice  little  girl,  in  her  child- 
ish way — though  much  too  blue-eyed — with  a  sort  of 
distant  bread-and-butterish  schoolroom  approbation, 
which  wholly  misled  and  hoodwinked  Elsie  as  to  his  real 
intentions.  And  whenever  he  spoke  of  Elsie  to  Winifred, 
he  spoke  of  her  jestingly,  with  a  good-humored,  unmean- 
ing, brotherly  affection  that  made  the  very  notion  of  his 
ever  contemplating  marriage  with  her  seem  simply  ridicu- 
lous. She  was  to  him  indeed  as  the  deceased  wife's  sister 
is  in  the  eye  of  the  law  to  the  British  widower.  With  his 
easy,  off-hand  London  cleverness,  he  had  baffled  and 
deceived  both  those  innocent,  simple-minded,  trustful 
women;  and  he  stood  face  to  face  now  with  a  general 
eclaircissement  which  could  no  longer  be  delayed,  but 
whose  ultimate  consequences  might  perhaps  prove  fatal 
to  all  his  little  domestic  arrangements. 

Would  Elsie  in  her  anger  set  Winifred  against  him? 
Would  Winifred,  justly  indignant  at  his  conduct  to  Elsie, 
refuse,  when  she  learned  the  whole  truth  to  marry  him? 

Nonsense — nonsense.  No  cause  for  alarm.  He  had 
never  really  been  engaged  to  Elsie — he  had  said  so  to  her 
face  a  thousand  times.  If  Elsie  chose  to  misinterpret  his 
kind  attentions,  bestowed  upon  her  solely  as  his  one  re- 
maining cousin  and  kinswoman,  the  only  other  channel  for 
the  blood  of  the  Massingers,  surely  Winifred  would  never 
be  so  foolish  as  to  fall  blindly  into  Elsie's  self-imposed 
error,  and  to  hold  him  to  a  bargain  he  had  over  and  over 
again  expressly  repudiated.  He  was  a  barrister,  and  he 
knew  his  ground  in  these  matters.  Chitty  on  Contract 
lays  it  down  as  an  established  principle  of  English  law 
that  free  consent  of  both  parties  forms  a  condition  pre- 
cedent and  essential  part  of  the  very  existence  of  a  com- 
pact of  marriage. 


92      .  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

With  such  transparent  internal  sophisms  did  Hugh 
Massinger  strive  all  day  to  stifle  and  smother  his  own 
conscience;  for  every  man  always  at  least  pretends  to 
keep  up  appearances  in  his  private  relations  with  that 
inexorable  domestic  censor.  But  as  evening  came  on, 
cigarette  in  mouth,  he  strolled  round  after  dinner,  by 
special  appointment,  to  meet  Elsie  at  the  big  poplar.  They 
often  met  there,  these  warm  summer  nights ;  and  on  this 
particular  occasion,  anticipating  trouble,  Hugh  had  defi- 
nitely arranged  with  Elsie  beforehand  to  come  to  him  by 
eight  at  the  accustomed  trysting-place.  The  Meyseys  and 
Winifred  had  gone  out  to  dinner  at  a  neighboring  vicar- 
age; but  Elsie  had  stopped  at  home  on  purpose,  on  the 
hasty  plea  of  some  slight  passing  headache.  Hugh  had 
specially  asked  her  to  wait  and  meet  him.  Better  get  it 
all  over  at  once,  he  thought  to  himself,  in  his  shortsighted 
wisdom — like  the  measles  or  the  chicken-pox — and  know 
straight  off  exactly  where  he  stood  in  his  new  position 
with  these  two  women. 

Women  were  the  greatest  nuisances  in  life.  For  his  own 
part,  now  he  came  to  look  the  thing  squarely  in  the  face, 
he  really  wished  he  was  well  quit  of  them  all  for  good  and 
ever. 

He  was  early  for  his  appointment;  but  by  the  tree  he 
found  Elsie,  in  her  pretty  white  dress,  already  waiting  for 
him.  His  heart  gave  a  jump,  a  pleased  jump,  as  he  saw 
her  sitting  there  before  her  time.  Dear,  dear  Elsie;  she 
was  very,  very  fond  of  him!  He  would  have  given  worlds 
to  fling  his  arms  tight  around  her  then,  and  strain  her  to  his 
bosom  and  kiss  her  tenderly.  He  would  have  given 
worlds,  but  not  his  reversionary  chances  in  the  Whitestrand 
property.  Worlds  don't  count;  the  entire  fee-simple  of 
Mars  and  Jupiter  would  fetch  nothing  in  the  real-estate 
market.  He  was  bound  by  contract  to  Winifred  now, 
and  he  must  do  his  best  to  break  it  gently  to  Elsie. 

He  stepped  up  and  kissed  her  quietly  on  the  forehead, 
and  took  her  hand  in  his  like  a  brother.  Elsie  let  it  lie 
in  her  own  without  remonstrance.  They  rose  and  walked 
in  lovers'  guise  along  the  bank  together.  His  heart  sank 
within  him  at  the  hideous  task  he  had  next  to  perform — 
nothing  less  than  to  break  poor  Elsie's  heart  for  her.  If 


SHUFFLING  IT  OFF.  93 

only  he  could  have  shuffled  out  of  it  sideways  anyhow! 
But  shuffling  was  impossible.  He  hated  himself;  and  he 
loved  Elsie.  Never  till  that  moment  did  he  know  how 
he  loved  her. 

This  would  never  do !  He  was  feeling  like  a  fool.  He 
crushed  down  the  love  sternly  in  his  heart,  and  began  to 
talk  about  indifferent  subjects — the  wind,  the  river,  the 
rose-show  at  the  vicarage.  But  his  voice  trembled,  be- 
traying him  still  against  his  will;  and  he  could  not  refrain 
from  stealing  sidelong  looks  at  Elsie's  dark  eyes  now  and 
again,  and  observing  how  beautiful  she  was,  after  all,  in 
a  rare  and  exquisite  type  of  beauty.  Winifred's  blue  eyes 
and  light-brown  hair,  Winifred's  small  mouth  and  molded 
nose,  Winifred's  insipid  smile  and  bashful  blush,  were 
cheap  as  dirt  in  the  matrimonial  lottery.  She  had  but  a 
doll-like,  Lowther  Arcade  style  of  prettiness.  Maidenly 
as  she  looked,  one  twist  more  of  her  nose,  one  shade 
lighter  in  her  hair,  and  she  would  become  simply  bar- 
maidenly.  But  Elsie's  strong  and  powerful,  earnest  face, 
with  its  serious  lips  and  its  long  black  eyelashes,  its  pro- 
found pathos  and  its  womanly  dignity,  its  very  irregularity 
and  faultiness  of  outline,  pleased  him  ten  thousand  times 
more  than  all  your  baby-faced  beauties  of  the  convention- 
al, stereotyped,  ballroom  pattern.  He  looked  at  her  long 
and  sighed  often.  Must  he  really  break  her  heart  for  her? 
At  last  he  could  restrain  that  unruly  member,  his  tongue, 
no  longer.  "Elsie,"  he  cried,  eying  her  full  in  a  genuine 
outburst  of  spontaneous  admiration,  "I  never  in  all  my  life 
saw  any  one  anywhere  one-half  so  beautiful  and  graceful 
as  you  are!" 

Elsie  smiled  a  pleased  smile.  "And  yet,"  she  mur- 
mured, with  a  half  malicious,  teasing  tone  of  irony,  "we're 
not  engaged,  Hugh,  after  all,  you  remember." 

Her  words  came  at  the  very  wrong  moment;  they 
brought  the  hot  blood  at  a  rush  into  Hugh's  cheek. 
"No,"  he  answered  coldly,  with  a  sudden  revulsion  and 
a  spasmodic  effort ;  "we're  not  engaged — nor  ever  will  be, 
Elsie!" 

Elsie  turned  round  upon  him  with  sudden  abruptness 
in  blank  bewilderment.  She  was  not  angry ;  she  was  not 
even  astonished ;  she  simply  failed  altogether  to  take  in  his 


94  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

meaning.  It  had  always  seemed  to  her  so  perfectly  nat- 
ural, so  simply  obvious  that  she  and  Hugh  were  sooner 
or  later  to  marry  one  another;  she  had  always  regarded 
Hugh's  frequent  reminder  that  they  were  not  engaged  as 
such  a  mere  playful  warning  against  too  much  precipitancy; 
she  had  always  taken  it  for  granted  so  fully  and  unre- 
servedly that  whenever  Hugh  was  rich  enough  to  provide 
for  a  wife  he  would  tell  her  so  plainly,  and  carry  out  the 
implied  engagement  between  them — that  this  sudden 
announcement  of  the  exact  opposite  meant  to  her  ears  less 
than  nothing.  And  now,  when  Hugh  uttered  those  cruel, 
crushing,  annihilating  words,  "Nor  ever  will  be,  Elsie," 
she  couldn't  possibly  take  in  their  reality  at  the  first  blush, 
or  believe  in  her  own  heart  that  he  really  intended  any- 
thing so  wicked,  so  merciless,  so  unnatural. 

"Nor  ever  will  be!"  she  cried,  incredulous.  "Why, 
Hugh,  Hugh,  I — I  don't  understand  you." 

Hugh  steeled  his  heart  with  a  violent  strain  to  answer 
back  in  one  curt,  killing  sentence:  "I  mean  it,  Elsie; 
I'm  going  to  marry  Winifred." 

Elsie  gazed  back  at  him  in  speechless  surprise.  "Going 
to  marry  Winifred?"  she  echoed  at  last  vaguely,  after  a 
long  pause,  as  if  the  words  conveyed  no  meaning  to  her 
mind.  "Going  to  marry  Winifred?  To  marry  Winifred! 
— Hugh,  did  you  really  and  truly  say  you  were  going  to 
marry  Winifred?" 

"I  proposed  to  her  this  morning,"  Hugh  answered  out- 
right, with  a  choking  throat  and  a  glassy  eye;  "and  she 
accepted  me,  Elsie;  so  I  mean  to  marry  her." 

"Hugh!" 

She  uttered  only  that  one  short  word,  in  a  tone  of  awful 
and  unspeakable  agony.  But  her  bent  brows,  her  pallid 
face,  her  husky  voice,  her  startled  attitude,  said  more  than 
a  thousand  words,  however  wild,  could  possibly  have  said 
for  her.  She  took  it  in  dimly  and  imperfectly  now;  she 
began  to  grasp  what  Hugh  was  talking  about;  but  as  yet 
she  could  not  understand  to  the  full  all  the  man's  profound 
and  unfathomed  infamy.  She  looked  at  him  feebly  for 
some  word  of  explanation.  Surely  he  must  have  some 
deep  and  subtle  reason  of  his  own  for  this  astonishing  act 
and  fact  of  furtive  treachery.  Some  horrible  combination 


SHUFFLING  IT  OFF.  95 

of  adverse  circumstances,  about  which  she  knew  and  could 
know  nothing,  must  have  driven  him  against  his  will  to 
this  incredible  solution  of  an  insoluble  problem.  He 
could  not  of  his  own  mere  motion  have  proposed  to  Wini- 
fred. She  looked  at  him  hard:  he  quailed  before  her 
scrutiny. 

"I  love  you,  Elsie,"  he  burst  out  with  an  irresistible 
impulse  at  last,  as  she  gazed  through  and  through  him 
from  her  long  black  lashes. 

Elsie  laid  her  hand  on  his  shoulder  blindly.  "You  love 
me,"  she  murmured.  "Hugh,  Hugh,  you  still  love  me?" 

"I  always  loved  you,  Elsie,"  Hugh  answered  bitterly 
with  a  sudden  pang  of  abject  remorse;  "and  as  long  as  I 
live  I  shall  always  love  you." 

"And  yet — you  are  going  to  marry  Winifred!" 

"Elsie!     We  were  never,  never  engaged." 

She  turned  round  upon  him  fiercely  with  a  burst  of 
horror.  He,  to  take  refuge  in  that  hollow  excuse! 
"Never  engaged!"  she  cried,  aghast.  "You  mean  it,  Hugh? 
— you  mean  that  mockery? — And  I,  who  would  have  given 
up  my  life  for  love  of  you!" 

He  tried  to  assume  a  calm  judicial  tone.  "Let  us  be 
reasonable,  Elsie,"  he  said,  with  an  attempt  at  ease,  "and 
talk  this  matter  over  without  sentiment  or  hysterics.  You 
knew  very  well  I  was  too  poor  to  marry;  you  knew  I 
always  said  we  were  only  cousins;  you  knew  I  had  my 
way  in  life  to  make.  You  could  never  have  thought  I 
really  and  seriously  dreamt  of  marrying  you!" 

Elsie  looked  up  at  him  with  a  scared  white  face.  That 
Hugh  should  descend  to  such  transparent  futilities!  "This 
is  all  new  to  me,"  she  moaned  out  in  a  dazed  voice. 
"All,  all — quite,  quite  new  to  me." 

"But,  Elsie,  I  have  said  it  over  and  over  a  thousand 
times  before." 

She  gazed  back  at  him  like  a  stone.  "Ah,  yes;  but  till 
to-day,"  she  murmured  slowly,  "you  never,  never,  never 
meant  it." 

He  sat  down,  unmanned,  on  the  grass  by  the  bank. 
She  seated  herself  by  his  side,  mechanically  as  it  were, 
with  her  hand  on  his  arm,  and  looked  straight  in  front 
of  her  with  a  vacant  stare  at  the  angry  water.  It  was 


96  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

growing  dark.  The  shore  was  dark,  and  the  sea,  and 
the  river.  Everything  was  dark  and  black  and  gloomy 
around  her.  She  laid  his  hand  one  moment  in  her  own. 
"Hugh!"  she  cried,  turning  toward  him  with  appealing 
pathos,  "y°u  don't  mean  it  now:  you  will  never  mean  it. 
You're  only  saying  it  to  try  and  prove  me.  Tell  me  it's 
that.  You're  yourself  still.  O  Hugh,  my  darling,  you 
can  never  mean  it!'' 

Her  words  burnt  into  his  brain  like  liquid  fire;  and 
the  better  self  within  him  groaned  and  faltered;  but  he 
crushed  it  down  with  an  iron  heel.  The  demon  of  avarfce 
held  his  sordid  soul.  "My  child,"  he  said,  with  a  tender 
inflection  in  his  voice  as  he  said  it,  "we  must  understand 
one  another.  I  do  seriously  intend  to  marry  Winifred 
Meysey." 

"Why?" 

There  was  a  terrible  depth  of  suppressed  earnestness  in 
that  sharp  short  why,  wrung  out  of  her  by  anguish,  as  of 
a  woman  who  asks  the  reason  of  her  death-warrant.  Hugh 
Massinger  answered  it  slowly  and  awkwardly  with  cum- 
brous, round-about,  self-exculpating  verbosity.  As  for 
Elsie,  she  sat  like  a  statue  and  listened:  rigid  and  im- 
movable, she  sat  there  still;  while  Hugh,  for  the  very 
first  time  in  her  whole  experience,  revealed  the  actual  man 
he  really  was  before  her  appalled  and  horrified  and 
speechless  presence.  He  talked  of  his  position,  his  pros- 
pects, his  abilities.  He  talked  of  journalism,  of  the  bar, 
of  promotion.  He  talked  of  literature,  of  poetry,  of  fame. 
He  talked  of  money,  and  its  absolute  need  to  man  and 
woman  in  these  latter  days  of  ours.  He  talked  of  Wini- 
fred, of  Whitestrand,  and  of  the  Meysey  manor-house. 
"It'll  be  best  in  the  end  for  us  both,  you  know,  Elsie,"  he 
said  argumentatively,  in  his  foolish  rigmarole,  mistaking 
her  silence  for  something  like  unwilling  acquiescence. 
"Of  course  I  shall  be  very  fond  of  you,  as  I've  always  been 
fond  of  you — like  a  cousin  only — and  I'll  be  a  brother  to 
you  now  as  long  as  I  live ;  and  when  Winifred  and  I  are 
really  married,  and  I  live  here  at  Whitestrand,  I  shall  be 
able  to  do  a  great  deal  more  for  you,  and  help  you  by 
every  means  in  my  power,  and  introduce  you  freely  into 
our  own  circle,  on  different  terms,  you  know,  where  you'll 


SHUFFLING  IT  OFF.  9? 

have  chances  of  meeting — well,  suitable  persons.  You 
must  see  yourself  it's  the  best  thing  for  us  both.  The  idea 
of  two  penniless  people  like  you  and  me  marrying  one 
another  in  the  present  state  of  society  is  simply  ridiculous." 

She  heard  him  out  to  the  bitter  end,  revealing  the  naked 
deformity  of  his  inmost  nature,  though  her  brain  reeled 
at  it,  without  one  passing  word  of  reproach  or  dissent. 
Then  she  said  in  an  icy  tone  of  utter  horror:  "Hugh!" 

"Yes,  Elsie." 

"Is  that  all?" 

"That  is  all." 

"And  you  mean  it?" 

"I  mean  it." 

"Oh,  for  heaven's  sake,  before  you  kill  me  outright, 
Hugh,  Hugh!  is  it  really  true?  Are  you  realty  like  that? 
Do  you  really  mean  it?" 

"I  really  mean  to  marry  Winifred." 

Elsie  clasped  her  two  hands  on  either  side  of  her  head, 
as  if  to  hold  it  together  from  bursting  with  her  agony. 
"Hugh,"  she  cried,  "it's  foolish,  I  know,  but  I  ask  you 
once  more,  before  it's  too  late,  in  sight  of  heaven,  I  ask 
you  solemnly,  are  you  seriously  in  earnest?  Is  that  what 
you're  made  of?  Are  you  going  to  desert  me?  To  de- 
sert and  betray  me?" 

"I  don't  know  what  you  mean,"  Hugh  answered  stonily, 
rising  as  if  to  go — for  he  could  stand  it  no  longer.  "I've 
never  been  engaged  to  you.  I  always  told  you  so.  I  owe 
you  nothing.  And  now  I  mean  to  marry  Winifred." 

With  a  cry  of  agony,  she  burst  wildly  away  from  him. 
She  saw  it  all  now ;  she  understood  to  the  full  the  cruelty 
and  baseness  of  the  man's  innermost  underlying  nature. 
Fair  outside;  but  false,  false,  false  to  the  core!  Yet  even 
so,  she  could  scarcely  believe  it.  The  faith  of  a  lifetime 
fought  hard  for  life  in  her.  He,  that  Hugh  she  had  so 
loved  and  trusted — he,  the  one  Hugh  in  all  the  universe — 
he  to  cast  her  off  with  such  callous  selfishness!  He  to 
turn  upon  her  now  with  his  empty  phrases!  He  to  sell 
and  betray  her  for  a  Winifred  and  a  manor-house!  Oh, 
the  guilt  and  sin  of  it!  Her  head  reeled  and  swam  round 
deliriously.  She  hardly  knew  what  she  felt  or  did.  Mad 
with  agony,  love,  and  terror,  she  rushed  away  headlong 


98  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

from  his  polluted  presence — not  from  Hugh,  but  from 
this  fallen  idol.  He  saw  her  white  dress  disappearing 
fast  through  the  deep  gloom  in  the  direction  of  the  poplar- 
tree,  and  he  groped  his  way  after  her,  almost  as  mad  as 
herself,  struck  dumb  with  remorse  and  awe  and  shame 
at  the  ruin  he  had  visibly  and  instantly  wrought  in  the 
fabric  of  that  trustful  girl's  whole  being. 

One  moment  she  fled  and  stumbled  in  the  dark  along 
the  grassy  path  toward  the  roots  of  the  poplar.  Then 
he  caught  a  glimpse  of  her  for  a  second,  dimly  silhouetted 
in  the  faint  starlight,  a  wan  white  figure  with  outstretched 
arms  against  the  black  horizon.  She  was  poising,  irreso- 
lute, on  the  gnarled  roots.  It  was  but  for  the  twinkling 
of  an  eye  that  he  saw  her;  next  instant,  a  splash,  a  gurgle, 
a  shriek  of  terror,  and  he  beheld  her  borne  wildly  away, 
a  helpless  burden,  by  that  fierce  current  toward  the  break- 
ers that  glistened  whjte  and  roared  hoarsely  in  their 
savage  joy  on  the  bar  of  the  river. 

In  her  agony  of  disgrace,  she  had  fallen,  rather  than 
thrown  herself  in.  As  she  stood  there,  undecided,  on 
the  slippery  roots,  with  all  her  soul  burning  within  her, 
her  head  swimming  and  her  eyes  dim,  a  bruised,  humil- 
iated, hopeless  creature,  she  had  missed  her  foothold  on 
the  smooth  worn  stump,  slimy  with  lichens,  and  raising 
her  hands  as  if  to  balance  herself,  had  thrown  herself  for- 
ward half  wittingly,  half  unconsciously,  on  the  tender 
mercies  of  the  rushing  stream.  When  she  returned  for  a 
moment,  a  little  later,  to  life  and  thought,  it  was  with  a 
swirling  sensation  of  many  waters,  eddying  and  seething 
in  mad  conflict  round  her  faint  numb  form.  Strange 
roaring  noises  thundered  in  her  ear.  A  choking  sensa- 
tion made  her  gasp  for  breath.  What  she  drank  in  with 
her  gasp  was  not  air,  but  water — salt,  brackish  water,  an 
overwhelming  flood  of  it.  Then  she  sank  again,  and  was 
dimly  aware  of  the  cold  chill  ocean  floating  around  her  on 
every  side.  She  took  a  deep  gulp,  and  with  it  sighed  out 
her  sense  of  life  and  action.  Hugh  was  lost  to  her,  and 
it  was  all  over.  She  could  die  now.  She  had  nothing 
to  live  for.  There  was  no  Hugh ;  and  she  had  not  killed 
herself. 

Those  two  dim  thoughts  were  the  last  she  knew  as  her 


SINK  OR  SWIM.  99 

eyes  closed  in  the  rushing  current:  there  had  never  been 
a  Hugh ;  and  she  had  fallen  in  by  accident. 


CHAPTER  XL 
SINK  OR  SWIM? 

Hugh  was  selfish,  heartless,  and  unscrupulous;  but  he 
was  not  physically  a  coward,  a  cur,  or  a  palterer.  Without 
one  second's  thought,  he  rushed  wildly  down  to  the 
water's  edge,  and  balancing  himself  for  a  plunge,  with  his 
hands  above  his  head,  on  the  roots  of  the  big  tree,  he 
dived  .boldly  into  that  wild  current,  against  whose  terrific 
force  he  had  once  already  struggled  so  vainly  on  the  morn- 
ing of  his  first  arrival  at  Whitestrand.  Elsie  had  had  but 
a  few  seconds'  start  of  him;  writh  his  powerful  arms  to 
aid  him  in  the  quest,  he  must  surely  overtake  and  save 
her  before  she  could  drown,  even  in  that  mad  swirling 
tidal  torrent.  He  flung  himself  on  the  water  with  all  his 
force,  and  goaded  by  remorse,  pity,  and  love — for,  after 
all,  he  loved  her,  he  loved  her — he  drew  unwonted  strength 
from  the  internal  fires,  as  he  pushed  back  the  fierce  flood 
on  either  side  with  arms  and  thews  of  feverish  energy. 
At  each  strong  push,  he  moved  forward  apace  with  the 
gliding  current,  and  in  the  course  of  a  few  strokes  he  was 
already  many  yards  on  his  way  seaward  from  the  point  at 
which  he  had  originally  started.  But  his  boots  and  clothes 
clogged  his  movements  terribly,  and  his  sleeves  in  particu- 
lar so  impeded  his  arms  that  he  could  hardly  use  them 
to  any  sensible  advantage.  He  felt  conscious  at  once 
that,  under  such  hampering  conditions,  it  would  be  im- 
possible to  swim  for  many  minutes  at  a  stretch.  He  must 
find  Elsie  and  save  her  almost  immediately,  or  both  must 
go  down  and  drown  together. 

He  wanted  nothing  more  than  to  drown  with  her  now. 
"Elsie,  Elsie,  my  darling  Elsie!"  he  cried  aloud  on  the  top 
of  the  wave.  To  lose  Elsie  was  to  lose  everything.  The 
sea  was  running  high  as  he  neared  the  bar,  and  Elsie  had 
disappeared  as  if  by  magic.  Even  in  that  dark  black  water 


100  THIS  MORTAL  COIL,. 

on  that  moonless  night  he  wondered  he  couldn't  catch  a 
single  glimpse  of  her  white  dress  by  the  reflected  star- 
light. But  the  truth  was,  the  current  had  sucked  her 
under — sucked  her  under  wildly  with  its  irresistible  force, 
only  to  fling  her  up  again,  a  senseless  burden,  where  sea 
and  river  met  at  last  in  fierce  conflict  among  the  roaring 
breakers  that  danced  and  shivered  upon  the  shallow  bar. 

He  swam  about  blindly,  looking  round  him  on  every 
side  through  the  thick  darkness  with  eager  eyes  for  some 
glimpse  of  Elsie's  white  dress  in  a  stray  gleam  of  starlight ; 
but  he  saw  not  a  trace  of  her  presence  anywhere.  Groping 
and  feeling  his  way  still  with  numbed  limbs,  that  grew 
weary  and  stiff  with  the  frantic  effort,  he  battled  on 
through  the  gurgling  eddy  till  he  reached  the  breakers 
on  the  bar  itself.  There,  his  strength  proved  of  no  avail — 
he  might  as  well  have  tried  to  stem  Niagara.  The  great 
waves,  rolling  their  serried  line  against  the  stream  from 
the  land,  caught  him  and  twisted  him  about  resistlessly, 
raising  him  now  aloft  on  their  foaming  crest,  dashing 
him  now  down  deep  in  their  hollow  trough,  and  then  fling- 
ing him  back  again  over  some  great  curling  mountain  of 
water  far  on  to  the  current  from  which  he  had  just 
emerged  with  his  stout  endeavor.  For  ten  minutes  or 
more  he  struggled  madly  against  those  titanic  enemies; 
then  his  courage  and  his  muscle  failed  together,  and  he 
gave  up  the  unequal  contest  out  of  sheer  fatigue  and 
physical  inability  to  continue  it  longer.  It  wras  indeed 
an  awful  and  appalling  situation.  Alone  there  in  the  dark, 
whirled  about  by  a  current  that  no  man  could  stem,  and 
confronted  with  a  rearing  wall  of  water  that  no  man  could 
face,  he  threw  himself  wearily  back  for  a  moment  at  full 
length,  and  looked  up  in  his  anguish  from  his  floating 
couch  to  the  cold  stars  overhead,  whose  faint  light  the 
spray  every  instant  hid  from  his  sight  as  it  showered 
over  him  from  the  curling  crests  of  the  great  billows  be- 
yond him.  And  it  was  to  this  that  he  had  driven  poor, 
innocent,  trustful,  wronged  Elsie !  the  one  woman  he  had 
ever  truly  loved!  the  one  woman  who,  with  all  the  force 
of  a  profound  nature — profounder  ten  thousand  times 
than  his  own — had  truly  loved  him ! 

Elsie  was  tossing  up  and  down  there  just  as  hopelessly 


SINK  OR  SWIM.  101 

now,  no  doubt.  But  Elsie  had  no  pang  of  conscience 
added  to  torment  her.  She  had  only  a  broken  heart  to 
reckon  with. 

He  let  himself  float  idly  where  wind  and  waves  might 
happen  to  bear  him.  There  was  no  help  for  it:  he 
could  swim  no  farther.  It  was  all  over,  all  over  now. 
Elsie  was  lost,  and  for  all  the  rest  he  cared  that  moment 
less  than  nothing.  Winifred!  He  scorned  and  hated  her 
very  name.  He  might  drown  at  his  ease,  for  anything  he 
would  ever  do  himself  to  prevent  it.  The  waves  broke 
over  him  again  and  again.  He  let  them  burst  across  his 
face  or  limbs,  and  floated  on,  without  endeavoring  to  swim 
or  guide  himself  at  all.  Would  he  never  sink?  Was  he 
to  float  and  float  and  float  like  this  to  all  eternity? 

Roar — roar — roar  on  the  bar,  each  roar  growing  fainter 
and  fainter  in  his  ears.  Clearly  receding,  receding  still. 
The  current  was  carrying  him  away  from  it  now,  and 
whirling  him  along  in  a  black  eddy,  that  set  strongly 
southwestward  toward  the  dike  of  the  salt  marshes. 

He  let  himself  drift  wherever  it  might  take  him.  It 
took  him  back,  back,  back,  steadily,  till  he  saw  the  white 
crest  of  the  breakers  on  the  ridge  extend  like  a  long  gray 
line  in  the  dim  distance  upon  the  sea  beyond  him.  He 
was  well  into  safer  water  by  this  time:  the  estuary  was 
only  very  rough  here.  He  might  swim  if  he  chose.  But 
he  did  not  choose.  He  cared  nothing  for  life,  since  Elsie 
was  gone.  In  a  sudden  revulsion  of  wild  despair,  a  frantic 
burst  of  hopeless  yearning,  he  knew,  for  the  first  time  in 
his  whole  life,  now  it  was  too  late,  how  truly  and  deeply 
and  intensely  he  had  loved  her.  As  truly  and  deeply  as 
he  was  capable  of  loving  anybody  or  anything  on  earth 
except  himself.  And  that,  after  all,  was  nothing  too  much 
to  boast  of. 

Still,  it  was  enough  to  overwhelm  him  for  the  moment 
with  agonies  of  remorse  and  regret  and  pity,  and  to  make 
him  long  just  then  and  there  for  instant  death,  as  the 
easiest  escape  from  his  own  angry  and  accusing  con- 
science. He  wanted  to  die ;  he  yearned  and  prayed  for  it. 
But  death  obstinately  refused  to  come  to  his  aid.  He 
turned  himself  round  on  his  face  now,  and  striking  out 
just  once  with  his  wearied  thighs,  gazed  away  blankly 


102  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

toward  the  foam  on  the  bar,  where  Elsie's  body  must  still 
be  tossing  in  a  horrible  ghastly  dance  of  death  among  the 
careering  breakers. 

As  he  looked,  a  gleam  of  ruddy  light  showed  for  a 
second  from  a  masthead  just  beyond  the  bar.  A  smack — 
a  smack!  coming  in  to  the  river!  The  sight  refilled  him 
with  a  faint  fresh  hope.  That  hope  was  too  like  despair; 
but  still  it  was  something.  He  swam  out  once  more  with 
the  spasmodic  energy  of  utter  despondency.  The  smack 
might  still  be  in  time  to  save  Elsie !  He  would  make  his 
way  out  to  it,  though  it  ran  him  down;  if  it  ran  him 
down,  so  much  the  better!  he  would  shout  aloud  at  the 
top  of  his  voice,  to  outroar  the  breakers:  "A  lady  is 
drowning!  Save  her! — save  her!" 

He  struck  out  again  with  mad  haste  through  the  black 
current.  This  time,  he  had  to  fight  against  it  with  his 
wearied  limbs,  and  to  plough  his  way  by  prodigious 
efforts.  The  current  was  stronger,  now7  he  came  to  face 
it,  than  he  had  at  all  imagined  when  he  merely  let  himself 
drift  on  its  surface.  Battling  with  all  his  m'ight  against 
the  fierce  swirls,  he  hardly  seemed  to  make  any  headway 
at  all  through  the  angry  water.  His  strength  was  almost 
all  used  up  now;  he  could  scarcely  last  till  he  reached  the 
smack. — Great  heavens,  what  was  this?  She  was  turn- 
ing!— she  was  turning!  The  surf  was  too  much  for  her 
timbers  to  endure.  She  couldn't  make  the  mouth  of  the 
creek.  She  was  luffing  seaward  again,  and  it  was  all  up, 
all  up  with  Elsie. 

It  was  Warren  Relf's  yawl,  bearing  down  from  Lowes- 
toft,  and  trying  for  the  first  time  to  enter  the  river  through 
the  wall  of  breakers. 

Oh,  if  he  had  only  lain  right  in  her  path  just  then,  as 
she  rode  over  the  waves,  that  she  might  run  him  down 
and  sink  him  forever,  with  his  weight  of  infamy,  beneath 
those  curling  billows!  He  could  never  endure  to  go 
ashore  again— and  to  feel  that  he  had  virtually  murdered 
Elsie. 

Elsie,  Elsie,  poor  murdered  Elsie!  He  should  hate  to 
live,  now  he  had  murdered  Elsie! 

And  then,  as  he  battled  still  fiercely  with  the  tide,  in  a 
flash  of  his  nerves,  he  felt  suddenly  a  wild  spasm  of  pain 


SINK  OR  SWIM.  103 

seize  on  both  his  thighs,  and  an  utter  disablement  affect 
his  entire  faculty  of  bodily  motion.  It  was  a  paroxysm 
of  cramp — overwhelming — inexpressible — and  it  left  him 
in  one  second  powerless  to  move  or  think  or  act  or  plan, 
a  mere  dead  log,  incapable  of  anything  but  a  cry  of  pain, 
and  helpless  as  a  baby  in  the  midst  of  that  cruel  and  un- 
heeding eddy. 

He  flung  himself  back  for  dead  on  the  water  once  more. 
A  choking  sensation  seized  hold  of  his  senses.  The  sea 
was  pouring  in  at  his  nostrils  and  his  ears.  He  knew 
he  was  going,  and  he  was  glad  to  know  it.  He  would 
rather  die  than  live  with  that  burden  of  guilt  upon  his 
black  soul.  The  waves  washed  over  his  face  in  serried 
ranks.  He  didn't  mind;  he  didn't  struggle;  he  didn't 
try  for  one  instant  to  save  himself.  He  floated  on,  uncon- 
scious at  last,  back,  slowly  back,  toward  the  bank  of  the 
salt  marsh. 

When  Hugh  Massinger  next  knew  anything,  he  was 
dimly  conscious  of  lying  at  full  length  on  a  very  cold  bed, 
and  fumbling  with  his  fingers  to  pull  the  bed-clothes  closer 
around  him.  But  there  was  no  bed-clothes,  and  every- 
thing about  was  soaking  wet.  He  must  be  stretched  in 
a  pool  of  water,  he  thought — so  damp  it  was  all  round 
to  the  touch — with  a  soft  mattress  or  couch  spread  beneath 
him.  He  put  out  his  hands  to  feel  the  mattress.  He 
came  upon  mud,  mud,  deep  layers  of  mud;  all  cold  and 
slimy  in  the  dusk  of  night.  And  then  with  a  flash  he 
remembered  all — Elsie  dead!  Elsie  drowned! — and  knew 
he  was  stranded  by  the  ebbing  tide  on  the  edge  of  the 
embankment.  No  hope  of  helping  Elsie  now.  With  a 
violent  effort,  he  roused  himself  to  consciousness,  and 
crawled  feebly  on  his  knees  to  the  firm  ground.  It  was 
difficult  work,  floundering  through  the  mud,  with  his 
numb  limbs;  but  he  floundered  on,  upon  hands  and  feet, 
till  he  reached  the  shore,  and  stood  at  last,  dripping  with 
brine  and  crusted  with  soft  slimy  tidal  ooze,  on  the  broad 
bank  of  the  moated  dike  that  hemmed  in  the  salt  marshes 
from  the  mud-bank  of  the  estuary.  It  was  still  dark 
night,  but  the  moon  had  risen.  He  could  hardly  say 
what  the  time  might  be,-  for  his  watch  had  stopped,  of 


104  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

course,  by  immersion  in  the  water;  but  he  roughly 
guessed,  by  the  look  of  the  stars,  it  was  somewhere  about 
half-past  ten.  We  have  a  vague  sense  of  the  lapse  of  time 
even  during  sleep  or  other  unconscious  states;  and  Hugh 
was  certain  he  couldn't  have  been  floating  for  much  more 
than  an  hour  or  thereabouts. 

He  gazed  around  him  vaguely  at  the  misty  meadows. 
He  was  a  mile  or  so  from  the  village  inn.  The  estuary, 
with  its  acrid  flats  of  mud,  lay  between  him  and  the  hard 
at  Whitestrand.  Sheets  of  white  surf  still  shimmered 
dimly  on  the  bar  far  out  to  sea.  And  Elsie  was  lost — lost 
to  him  irrevocably. 

He  sat  down  and  pondered  on  the  bank  for  a  while. 
Those  five  minutes  were  the  turning-point  of  his  life. 
What  should  he  do  and  how  comport  himself  under  these 
sudden  and  awful  and  unexpected  circumstances?  Dazed 
as  he  was,  he  saw  even  then  the  full  horror  of  the  dilemma 
that  hedged  him  in.  Awe  and  shame  brought  him  back 
with  a  rush  to  reason.  If  he  went  home  and  told  the  whole 
horrid  truth,  everybody  would  say  he  was  Elsie's  mur- 
derer. Perhaps  they  would  even  suggest  that  he  pushed 
her  in — to  get  rid  of  her.  He  dared  not  tell  it ;  he  dared 
not  face  it.  Should  he  fly  the  village — the  county — the 
country? — That  would  be  foolish  and  precipitate  indeed, 
not  to  say  wicked:  a  criminal  surrender.  All  was  not 
lost,  though  Elsie  was  lost  to  him.  In  his  calmer  mood, 
no  longer  heroic  with  the  throes  of  despondency,  sitting 
shivering  there  with  cold  in  the  keen  breeze,  between  his 
dripping  clothes,  upon  the  bare  swept  bank,  he  said  to 
himself  many  times  over  that  all  was  not  lost;  he  might 
still  go  back — and  marry  Winifred. 

Hideous — horrible — ghastly — inhuman :  he  reckoned 
even  so  his  chances  with  Winifred. 

The  shrewd  wind  blew  chill  upon  his  wet  clothes.  It 
bellowed  and  roared  with  hoarse  groans  round  the  stakes 
on  the  dike-sluices.  His  head  was  whirling  still  with 
asphyxia  and  numbness.  He  felt  hardly  in  a  condition 
to  think  or  reason.  But  this  was  a  crisis,  a  life-and-death 
crisis.  He  must  pull  himself  together  like  a  man,  and 
work  it  all  out,  his  doubtful  course  for  the  next  three 
hours,  or  else  sink  for  ever  in  a  sea  of  obloquy,  remem- 


SINK  OR  SWIM.  105 

bered  only  as  Elsie's  murderer.  Everything  was  at  stake 
for  him — live  or  die.  Should  he  jump  once  more  into  the 
cold  wild  stream — or  go  home  quietly  like  a  sensible  man, 
and  play  his  hand  out  to  marry  Winifred? 

If  he  meant  to  go,  he  must  go  at  once.  It  was  no  use 
to  think  of  delaying  or  shilly-shallying.  By  eleven  o'clock 
the  inn  would  be  closed.  He  must  steal  in,  unperceived, 
by  the  open  French  window's  before  eleven,  if  he  intended 
still  to  keep  the  game  going.  But  he  must  have  his  plan 
of  action  definitely  mapped  out  none  the  less  beforehand; 
and  to  map  it  out,  he  must  wait  a  moment  still;  he  must 
sum  up  chances  in  this  desperate  emergency. 

Life  is  a  calculus  of  varying  probabilities.  Was  it  likely 
he  had  been  perceived  at  the  Hall  that  evening?  Did  any- 
body know  he  had  been  walking  with  Elsie? 

He  fancied  not — he  believed  not. — He  was  certain 
not,  now  he  came  to  think  of  it.  Thank  heaven,  he  had 
made  the  appointment  verbally.  If  he'd  written  a  note, 
that  damning  evidence  might  have  been  produced  against 
him  at  the  coroner's  inquest.  Inquest?  Unless  they 
found  the  body — Elsie's  body — pah !  how  horrible  to  think 
of — but  still,  a  man  must  steel  himself  to  face  facts,  how- 
ever ghastly  and  however  horrible.  Unless  they  found 
the  body,  then,  there  would  be  no  inquest;  and  if  only 
things  were  managed  well  and  cleverly,  there  needn't  even 
be  any  inquiry.  Unless  they  found  the  body — Elsie's 
body — poor  Elsie's  body,  whirled  about  by  the  waves! — 
But  they  would  never  find  it — they  would  never  find  it. 
The  current  had  sucked  it  under  at  once,  and  carried  it 
away  careering  madly  to  the  sea.  It  would  toss  and  whirl 
on  the  breakers  for  a  while,  and  then  sink  unseen  to  the 
fathomless  abysses  of  the  German  Ocean. 

He  hated  himself  for  thinking  all  this — with  Elsie 
drowned — or  not  yet  drowned  even — and  yet  he  thought 
it,  because  he  was  not  man  enough  to  face  the  alternative. 

Had  Elsie  told  any  one  she  was  going  to  meet  him? 
No ;  she  wouldn't  even  tell  Winifred  of  that,  he  was  sure. 
She  met  him  there  often  by  appointment,  it  was  true,  but 
always  quietly :  they  kept  their  meetings  a  profound  secret 
between  them. 

Had  any  one  seen  them  that  evening  together?    He 


106  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

couldn't  remember  noticing  anybody. — How  shrill  the 
wind  blew  through  his  dripping  clothes.  It  cut  him  in 
two;  and  his  head  reeled  still. — No;  nobody,  nobody. 
He  was  quite  safe  upon  that  score  at  least  Nobody  knew 
he  was  out  with  Elsie. 

Could  he  go  back,  then,  and  keep  it  all  quiet,  saying 
nothing  himself,  but  leaving  the  world  to  form  its  own 
conclusions?  A  sudden  thought  flashed  in  an  intuitive 
moment  across  his  brain.  A  Plan ! — a  Plan !  How  hap- 
py! A  Policy!  He  saw  his  way  out  of  it  all  at  once. 
He  could  set  everything  right  by  a  simple  method.  Yes, 
that  would  do.  It  was  bold,  but  not  risky.  He  might  go 
now :  the  scheme  for  the  future  was  all  matured.  Nobody 
need  ever  suspect  anything.  A  capital  idea !  Honor  was 
saved ;  and  he  might  still  go  back  and  marry  Winifred. 

Elsie  dead!  Elsie  drowned!  The  world  lost,  and  his  life 
a  blank!  But  he  might  still  go  back  and  marry  Winifred. 

He  rose,  and  shook  himself  in  the  wind  like  a  dog. 
The  Plan  was  growing  more  definite  and  rounded  in  his 
mind  each  moment.  He  turned  his  face  slowly  toward 
the  lights  at  Whitestrand.  The  estuary  spread  between 
him  and  them  with  its  wide  mud-flats.  Cold  and  tired 
as  he  was,  he  must  make  at  all  speed  for  the  point  where 
it  narrowed  into  the  running  stream  near  Snade  meadows. 
He  must  swim  the  river  there,  with  what  legs  he  had  left, 
and  cross  to  the  village.  There  was  no  time  to  be  lost. 
It  was  neck  or  nothing.  At  all  hazards,  he  must  do  his 
best  to  reach  the  inn  before  the  doors  were  shut  and 
locked  at  eleven. 

When  he  left  the  spot  where  he  had  been  tossed  ashore, 
his  idea  for  the 'future  was  fully  worked  out.  He  ran 
along  the  bank  with  eager  haste  in  the  direction  of  White- 
strand.  Once  only  did  he  turn  and  look  behind  him.  A 
ship's  light  gleamed  feebly  in  the  offing  across  the  angry 
sea.  She  was  beating  up  against  a  head  wind  to  catch  the 
breeze  outside  toward  Lowestoft  or  Yarmouth. 


THE  PLAN  IN  EXECUTION.  IK 

CHAPTER  XII. 

THE  PLAN  IN  EXECUTION. 

Hugh  hurried  along  the  dike  that  bounded  the  salt-marsh 
meadows  seaward,  till  he  reached  the  point  in  his  march 
up  where  the  river  narrowed  abruptly  into  a  mere  third- 
class  upland  stream.  There  he  jumped  in,  and  swam 
across,  as  well  as  he  was  able  in  the  cold  dark  water,  to 
the  opposite  bank.  Once  over,  he  had  still  to  straggle 
as  best  he  might  through  two  or  three  swampy  fields,  and 
to  climb  a  thickset  hedge  or  two — regular  bullfinches — 
before  he  fairly  gained  the  belated  little  high-road.  His 
head  swam.  Wet  and  cold  and  miserable  without,  he  was 
torn  within  by  conflicting  passions;  but  he  walked  firm 
and  erect  now  along  the  winding  road  in  the  deep  gloom, 
fortunately  never  meeting  a  soul  in  the  half-mile  or  so  of 
way  that  lay  between  the  point  where  he  had  crossed  the 
stream  and  the  Fisherman's  Rest  by  the  'bank  at  White- 
strand.  He  was  glad  of  that,  for  it  was  his  cue  now  to 
escape  observation.  In  his  own  mind,  he  felt  himself 
a  murderer;  and  every  flicker  of  the  wind  among  the 
honey-suckles  in  the  hedge,  every  rustle  of  the  leaves  on 
the  trees  overhead,  every  splash  of  the  waves  upon  the 
distant  shore,  made  his  heart  flutter,  and  his  breath  stop 
short  in  response,  though  he  gave  no  outer  sign  of  fear  or 
compunction  in  his  even  tread  and  erect  bearing — the  even 
tread  and  erect  bearing  of  a  proud,  self-confident,  English 
gentleman. 

How  lucky  that  his  rooms  at  the  inn  happened  to  be 
placed  on  the  ground-floor,  and  that  they  opened  by 
French  windows  down  to  the  ground  on  to  the  little 
garden!  How  luckily,  too,  that  they  lay  on  the  hither 
side  of  the  door  and  the  taproom,  where  men  were  sitting 
late  over  their  mug  of  beer,  singing  and  rollicking  in  vul- 
gar mirth  with  their  loud  half-Danish,  East-Anglian  mer- 
riment! He  stole  through  the  garden  on  tiptoe,  unper- 
ceived,  and  glided  like  a  ghost  into  the  tiny  sitting-room. 
The  lamp  burned  brightly  on  the  parlor  table,  as  it  had 
burnt  all  evening,  in  readiness  for  his  arrival.  He  slipped 


108  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

quietly,  on  tiptoe  still,  into  the  bedroom  behind,  tossed 
off  a  stiff  glassful  of  brandy-and-water  cold,  and  changed 
his  clothes  from  head  to  foot  with  as  much  speed  and 
noiselessness  as  circumstances  permitted.  Then,  tread- 
ing more  easily,  he  went  out  once  more  with  a  bold  front 
into  the  other  room,  flung  himself  down  at  his  ease  in  the 
big  armchair,  took  up  a  book,  pretending  to  read,  and 
rang  the  bell  with  ostentatious  clamor  for  the  good  land- 
lady. His  plan  was  mature;  he  would  proceed  to  put 
it  into  execution. 

The  landlady,  a  plentiful  body  of  about  fifty,  came  in 
with  evident  surprise  and  hesitation.  "Lord  a  mussy, 
sar,"  she  cried  aloud  in  a  slight  flurry,  "I  thowt  yow  wor 
out;  an'  them  min  a-singin'  and  a-bellerin'  like  that  cover 
there  in  the  bar!  Stannaway'll  be  some  riled  when  he 
find  yow're  come  in  an'  all  that  noise  gooin'  on  in  the 
house!  'Teen't  respectable.  But  we  din't  hear  ye.  I 
hoop  yow'll  'scuse  'em :  they're  oonly  the  fishermen  from 
Snade,  enjoyin'  theirselves  in  the  cool  of  the  evenin'." 

Hugh  made  a  manful  effort  to  appear  unconcerned. 
"I  came  in  an  hour  ago  or  more,"  he  replied,  smiling — a 
sugar-of-lead  smile. — "But,  pray  don't  interfere  with  these 
good  people's  merriment  for  worlds,  I  beg  of  you.  I 
should  be  sorry,  indeed,  if  I  thought  I  put  a  stopper  upon 
anybody's  innocent  amusement  anywhere.  I  don't  want 
to  be  considered  a  regular  kill-joy. — I  rang  the  bell,  Mrs. 
Stannaway,  for  a  bottle  of  seltzer." 

It  was  a  simple  way  of  letting  them  know  he  was  really 
there;  and  though  the  lie  about  the  length  of  time  he  had 
been  home  was  a  fairly  audacious  one — for  somebody 
might  have  come  in  meanwhile  to  trim  the  lamp,  or  look 
if  he  was  about,  and  so  detect  the  falsehood — he  saw  at 
once,  by  Mrs.  Stannaway's  face,  that  it  passed  muster 
without  rousing  the  slightest  suspicion. 

"Why,  William,"  he  heard  her  say  when  she  went  out, 
in  a  hushed  voice  to  her  husband  in  the  taproom,  "Mr. 
Massinger  hev  bin  in  his  own  room  the  whool  time  while 
them  chaps  hev  bin  a-shoutin'  an'  swearin'  suffin  frightful 
out  here,  more  like  heathen  than  human  critters." 

Then,  they  hadn't  noticed  his  absence,  at  any  rate!  That 
was  well.  He  was  so  far  safe.  If  the  rest  of  his  plan  held 


THE  PLAN  IN  EXECUTION.  109 

water  equally,  all  might  yet  come  right — and  he  might  yet 
succeed  in  marrying  Winifred. 

To  save  appearances — and  marry  Winifred!  With 
Elsie  still  tossing  on  the  breakers  of  the  bar,  he  had  it  in 
his  mind  to  marry  Winifred! 

When  Mrs.  Stannaway  brought  the  seltzer,  Hugh  Mas- 
singer  merely  looked  up  from  the  book  he  was  reading 
with  a  pleasant  nod  and  a  murmured  "Thank  you."  'Twas 
the  most  he  dared.  His  teeth  chattered  so  he  could  hardly 
trust  himself  to  speak  any  farther;  but  he  tried  with  an 
agonized  effort  within  to  look  as  comfortable  under  the 
circumstances  as  possible.  As  soon  as  she  was  gone, 
however,  he  opened  the  seltzer,  and  pouring  himself  out 
a  second  strong  dose  of  brandy,  tossed  it  off  at  a  gulp, 
almost  neat,  to  steady  his  nerves  for  serious  business. 
Then  he  opened  his  blotting-book,  with  a  furtive  glance 
to  right  and  left,  and  took  out  a  few  stray  sheets  of  paper — 
to  write  a  letter.  The  first  sheet  had  some  stanzas  of  verse 
scribbled  loosely  upon  it,  with  many  corrections.  Hugh's 
eyes  unconsciously  fell  upon  one  of  them.  It  read  to  him 
just  then  like  an  act  of  accusation.  They  were  some  sim- 
ple lines  describing  some  ideal  Utopian  world — a  dream  of 
the  future — and  the  stanza  on  which  his  glance  had  lighted 
so  carelessly  ran  thus — 

"But  fairer  and  purer  still, 

True  love  is  there  to  behold; 
And  none  may  fetter  his  will 

With  law  or  with  gold: 
And  none  may  sully  his  wings 

With  the  deadly  taint  of  lust; 
But  freest  of  all  free  things 

He  soars  from  the  dust." 

"With  law  or  with' gold,"  indeed!  Fool!  Idiot!  Jacka- 
napes! He  crumpled  the  verses  angrily  in  his  hand  as  he 
looked,  and  flung  them  with  clenched  teeth  into  the  empty 
fireplace.  His  own  words  rose  up  in  solemn  judgment 
against  him,  and  condemned  him  remorselessly  by  antici- 
pation. He  had  sold  Elsie  for  Winifred's  gold,  and  the 
Nemesis  of  his  crime  was  already  pursuing  him  like  a 
deadly  phantom  through  all  his  waking  moments. 


110  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

With  a  set  cold  look  on  his  handsome  dark  face,  he 
selected  another  sheet  of  clean  white  notepaper  from  the 
morocco-covered  blotting-book,  and  then  pulled  a  bundle 
of  letters  in  a  girl's  handwriting,  secured  by  an  elastic 
india-rubber  band,  and  carefully  numbered  with  red  ink 
from  one  to  seventy,  in  the  order  they  had  been  received. 
Hugh  was  nothing,  indeed,  if  not  methodical.  In  his 
own  way,  he  had  loved  Elsie,  as  well  as  he  was  capable  of 
loving  anybody:  he  had  kept  every  word  she  ever  wrote 
to  him;  and  now  that  she  was  gone — dead  and  gone  for- 
ever— her  letters  were  all  he  had  left  that  belonged  to  her. 
He  laid  one  down  on  the  table  before  him,  and  yielding 
to  a  momentary  impulse  of  ecstasy,  he  kissed  it  first  with 
reverent  tenderness.  It  was  Elsie's  letter — poor  dead 
Elsie's. — Elsie  dead!  He  could  hardly  realize  it. — His 
brain  whirled  and  swam  with  the  manifold  emotions  of 
that  eventful  evening.  But  he  must  brace  himself  up  for 
his  part  like  a  man.  Re  must  not  be  weak.  There  was 
work  to  do;  he  must  make  haste  to  do  it. 

He  took  a  broad-nibbed  pen  carefully  from  his  desk — 
the  broadest  he  could  find — and  fitted  it  with  pains  to  his 
ivory  holder.  Elsie  always  used  a  broad  nib — poor 
drowned  Elsie — dear,  martyred  Elsie!  Then,  glancing 
sideways  at  her  last  letter,  he  wrote  on  the  sheet,  in  a  large 
flowing  angular  hand,  deep  and  black,  most  unlike  his 
own,  which  was  neal!  and  small  and  cramped  and  rounded, 
the  two  solitary  words,  "My  darling."  He  gazed  at  them 
when  done  with  evident  complacency.  They  would  do 
very  well :  an  excellent  imitation ! 

Was  he  going,  then,  to  copy  Elsie's  letter?  No;  for 
its  first  words  read  plainly,  "My  own  darling  Hugh."  He 
had  allowed  her  to  address  him  in  such  terms  as  that; 
but  still,  he  muttered  to  himself  even  now,  he  was  never 
engaged  to  her — never  engaged  to  her.  In  copying,  he 
omitted  the  word  "own."  That,  he  thought,  would  prob- 
ably be  considered  quite  too  affectionate  for  any  reasonable 
probability.  Even  in  emergencies  he  was  cool  and  col- 
lected. But  "My  darling,"  was  just  about  the  proper 
mean.  Girls  are  always  stupidly  gushing  in  their  expres- 
sion of  feeling  to  one  another.  No  doubt  Elsie  herself 
would  have  begun,  "My  darling." 


THE  PLAN    IN  EXECUTION.  Ill 

After  that,  he  turned  over  the  letters  with  careful  scru- 
tiny, as  if  looking  down  the  pages  one  by  one  for  some 
particular  phrase  or  word  he  wanted.  At  last  he  came 
upon  the  exact  thing,  "Mrs.  Meysey  and  Winifred  are 
going  out  to-morrow." — "That'll  do,"  he  said  in  his  soul  to 
himself:  "a  curl  to  the  w" — and  laying  the  blank  sheet 
once  more  before  him,  he  wrote  down  boldly,  in  the 
same  free  hand,  with  thick  black  down-strokes,  "My  dar- 
ling Winifred." 

The  Plan  was  shaping  itself  clearly  in  his  mind  now. 
Word  by  word  he  fitted  in  so,  copying  each  direct  from 
Elsie's  letters,  and  dovetailing  the  whole  with  skilled 
literary  craftsmanship  into  a  curious  cento  of  her  pet 
phrases,  till  at  last,  after  an  hour's  hard  and  anxious  work, 
round  drops  of  sweat  standing  meanwhile  cold  and  clammy 
upon  his  hot  forehead,  he  read  it  over  with  unmixed  ap- 
probation— to  himself — an  excellent  letter  both  in  design 
'and  execution. 


"Whitestrand  Hall,  September  17. 
"My  darling  Winifred : 

"I  can  hardly  make  up  my  mind  to  write  you 
this  letter;  and  yet  I  must:  I  can  no  longer  avoid  it.  I 
know  you  will  think  me  so  wicked,  so  ungrateful :  I  know 
Mrs.  Meysey  will  never  forgive  me;  but  I  can't  help  it. 
Circumstances  are  too  strong  for  me.  By  the  time  this 
reaches  you,  I  shall  have  left  Whitestrand,  I  fear  forever. 
Why  I  am  leaving,  I  can  never,  never  tell  you.  If  you 
try  to  find  out,  you  won't  succeed  in  discovering  it.  I 
know  what  you'll  think;  but  you're  quite  mistaken.  It's 
something  about  which  you  have  never  heard;  some- 
thing that  I've  told  to  nobody  anywhere;  something  I 
can  never,  never  tell,  even  to  you,  darling.  I've  written  a 
line  to  explain  to  Hugh;  but  it's  no  use  either  of  you 
trying  to  trace  me.  I  shall  write  to  you  some  day  again  to 
let  you  know  how  I'm  getting  on — but  never  my  where- 
abouts.— Darling,  for  heaven's  sake,  do  try  to  hush  this 
up  as  much  as  you  can.  To  have  myself  discussed  by  half 
the  country  would  drive  me  mad  with  despair  and  shame. 
Get  Mrs.  Meysey  to  say  I've  been  called  away  suddenly 


112  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

by  private  business,  and  will  not  return.  If  only  you 
knew  all,  you  would  forgive  me  everything. — Good-bye, 
darling.  Don't  think  too  harshly  of  me. 

"Ever  your  affectionate,  but  heart-broken 

"Elsie." 

His  soul  approved  the  style  and  the  matter.  Would  it 
answer  his  purpose?  he  wondered,  half  tremulously. 
Would  they  really  believe  Elsie  had  written  it,  and  Elsie 
was  gone?  How  account  for  her  never  having  been  seen 
to  quit  the  grounds  of  the  Hall?  For  her  not  having 
been  observed  at  Almundham  Station  ?  For  no  trace  being 
left  of  her  by  rail  or  road,  or  sea  or  river?  It  was  a  des- 
perate card  to  play,  he  knew,  but  he  held  no  other;  and 
fortune  often  favors  the  brave.  How  often  at  loo  had  he 
stood  against  all  precedent  upon  a  hopeless  hand,  and 
swept  the  board  in  the  end  by  some  audacious  stroke  of 
inspired  good  play,  or  some  strange  turn  of  the  favoring 
chances!  He  would  stand  to  win  now  in  the  same  spirit 
on  the  forged  letter.  It  was  his  one  good  card.  Nobody 
could  ever  prove  he  wrote  it.  And  perhaps,  with  the 
unthinking  readiness  of  the  world  at  large,  they  would 
accept  it  without  further  question. 

If  ever  Elsie's  body  were  recovered!  Ah,  yes,  true: 
that  would  indeed  be  fatal.  But  then,  the  chances  were 
enormously  against  it.  The  deep  sea  holds  its  own:  it 
yields  up  its  dead  only  to  patient  and  careful  search;  and 
who  would  ever  dream  of  searching  for  Elsie?  Except 
himself,  she  has  no  one  to  search  for  her.  The  letter  was 
vague  and  uncertain,  to  be  sure;  but  its  very  vagueness 
was  infinitely  better  than  the  most  definite  lie :  it  left  open 
the  door  to  so  much  width  of  conjecture.  Every  man 
could  invent  his  own  solution.  If  he  had  tried  to  tell  a 
plausible  story,  it  might  have  broken  down  when  con- 
fronted with  the  inconvenient  detail  of  stern  reality:  but 
he  had  trusted  everything  to  imagination.  And  imagi- 
nation is  such  a  charmingly  elastic  faculty!  The  Meyseys 
might  put  their  own  construction  upon  it.  Each,  no 
doubt,  would  put  a  different  one;  and  each  would  be 
convinced  that  his  own  was  the  truest. 

He  folded  it  up  and  thrust  it  into  an  envelope.    Then 


THE  PLAN  IN  EXECUTION.  113 

he  addressed  the  face  boldly,  in  the  same  free  black  hand  as 
the  letter  itself,  to  "Miss  Meysey,  The  Hall,  Whitestrand." 
In  the  corner  he  stuck  the  identical  monogram,  E.  C., 
written  with  the  strokes  crossing  each  other,  that  Elsie 
put  on  all  her  letters.  His  power  of  imitating  the  minutest 
details  of  any  autograph  stood  him  in  good  stead.  It  was 
a  perfect  facsimile,  letter  and  address:  and  tortured  as  he 
was  in  his  own  mind  by  remorse  and  fear,  he  still  smiled 
to  himself  an  approving  smile  as  he  gazed  at  the  absolutely 
undetectable  forgery.  No  expert  on  earth  could  ever  de- 
tect it.  "That'll  clinch  all,"  he  thought  serenely.  "They'll 
never  for  a  moment  doubt  that  it  comes  from  Elsie." 

He  knew  the  Meyseys  had  gone  out  to  dinner  at  the 
vicarage  that  evening,  and  would  not  return  until  after  the 
hour  at  which  Elsie  usually  retired.  As  soon  as  they  got 
back,  they  would  take  it  for  granted  she  had  gone  to  bed, 
as  she  always  did,  and  would  in  all  probability  never  in- 
quire for  her.  If  so,  nothing  would  be  known  till  to-mor- 
row at  breakfast.  He  must  drop  the  letter  into  the  box 
unperceived  to-night,  and  then  it  would  be  delivered  at 
Whitestrand  Hall  in  due  course  by  the  first  post  to-mor- 
row. 

He  shut  the  front  window,  put  out  the  lamp,  and  stole 
quietly  into  the  bedroom  behind.  That  done,  he  opened 
the  little  lattice  into  the  back  garden,  and  slipped  out, 
closing  the  window  closely  after  him,  and  blowing  out 
the  candle.  The  postoffice  lay  just  beyond  the  church. 
He  walked  there  fast,  dropped  his  letter  in  safety  into  the 
box,  and  turned,  unseen,  into  the  high-road  once  more 
in  the  dusky  moonlight. 

Wearied  and  faint  and  half  delirious  as  he  was  after  his 
long  immersion,  he  couldn't  even  now  go  back  to  the  inn 
to  rest  quietly.  Elsie's  image  haunted  him  still.  A  strange 
fascination  led  him  across  the  fields  and  through  the  lane 
to  the  Hall — to  Elsie's  last  dwelling-place.  He  walked 
in  by  the  little  side-gate,  the  way  he  usually  came  to  visit 
Elsie,  and  prowled  guiltily  to  the  back  of  the  house.  The 
family  had  evidently  returned,  and  suspected  nothing:  no 
siign  of  bustle  or  commotion  or  disturbance  betrayed  itself 
anywhere:  not  a  light  showed  from  a  single  window:  all 
was  dark  and  still  from  end  to  end,  as  if  poor  dead  Elsie 


114  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

were  sleeping  calmly  in  her  own  little  bedroom  in  the  main 
building.  It  was  close  on  one  in  the  morning  now.  Hugh 
skulked  and  prowled  around  the  east  wing  on  cautious 
tiptoe,  like  a  convicted  burglar. 

As  he  passed  Elsie's  room,  all  dark  and  empty,  a  mad 
desire  seized  upon  him  all  at  once  to  look  in  at  the  window 
and  see  how  everything  lay  within  there.  At  first,  he  had 
no  more  reason  for  the  act  in  his  head  than  that:  the 
Plan  only  developed  itself  further  as  he  thought  of  it.  It 
wouldn't  be  difficult  to  climb  to  the  sill  by  the  aid  of  the 
porch  and  the  clambering  wistaria.  He  hesitated  a  mo- 
ment; then  remorse  and  curiosity  finally  conquered.  The 
romantic  suggestion  came  to  him,  like  a  dream,  in  his 
fevered  and  almost  delirous  condition:  like  a  dream,  he 
carried  it  at  once  into  effect.  Groping  and  feeling  his 
way  with  numb  fingers,  dim  eyes,  and  head  that  still  reeled 
and  swam  in  terrible  giddiness  from  his  long  spell  of  con- 
tinued asphyxia,  he  raised  himself  cautiously  to  the  level 
of  the  sill,  and  prised  the  window  open  with  his  dead 
white  hand.  The  lamp  on  the  table,  though  turned  down 
so  low  that  he  hadn't  observed  its  glimmer  from  outside, 
was  still  alight  and  burning  faintly.  He  turned  it  up  just 
far  enough  to  see  through  the  gloom  his  way  about  the 
bedroom.  The  door  was  closed,  but  not  locked.  He 
twisted  the  key  noiselessly  with  dextrous  pressure,  so  as 
to  leave  it  fastened  from  the  inside. — That  was  a  clever 
touch! — They  would  think  Elsie  had  climbed  out  of  the 
window. 

A  few  letters  and  things  lay  loose  about  the  room.  The 
devil  within  him  was  revelling  nowr  in  hideous  sug- 
gestions. Why  not  make  everything  clear  behind  him? 
He  gathered  them  up  and  stuck  them  in  his  pocket.  Elsie's 
small  black  leather  bag  stood  on  a  wooden  frame  in  the 
far  corner.  He  pushed  into  it  hastily  the  nightdress  on  the 
bed,  the  brush  and  comb,  and  a  few  selected  articles  of 
underclothing  from  the  chest  of  drawers  by  the  tiled  fire- 
place. The  drawers  themselves  he  left  sedulously  open. 
It  argued  haste.  If  you  choose  to  play  for  a  high  stake, 
you  must  play  boldly,  but  you  must  "play  well.  Hugh 
never  for  a  moment  concealed  from  himself  the  fact  that 
the  adversary  against  whom  he  was  playing  now  was  the 


WHAT  SUCCESS.  Ii5 

public  hangman,  and  that  his  own  neck  was  the  stake  at 
issue. 

If  ever  it  was  discovered  that  Elsie  was  drowned,  all  the 
world,  including-  the  enlightened  British  jury — twelve 
butchers  and  bakers  and  candlestick-makers,  selected  at 
random  from  the  Whitestrand  rabble,  he  said  to  himself 
angrily — would  draw  the  inevitable  inference  for  them- 
selves that  Hugh  had  murdered  her.  His  own  neck  was 
the  stke  at  issue — his  own  neck,  and  honor,  and  honesty. 

He  glanced  around  the  room  with  an  approving  eye 
once  more.  It  was  capital!  Splendid!  Everything  was 
indeed  in  most  admired  disorder.  The  very  spot  it  looked, 
in  truth,  from  which  a  girl  had  escaped  in  a  breathless 
hurry.  He  left  the  lamp  still  burning  at  half-height:  that 
fitted  well;  lowered  the  bag  by  a  piece  of  tape  to  the  gar- 
den below;  littered  a  few  stray  handkerchiefs  and  lace 
bodices  loosely  on  the  floor;  and  crawling  out  of  the 
window  with  anxious  care,  tried  to  let  himself  down  hand 
over  hand  by  a  branch  of  the  wistaria. 

The  branch  snapped  short  with  an  ugly  crack;  and 
Hugh  found  himself  one  second  later  on  the  shrubbery 
below,  bruised  and  shaken. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 
WHAT  SUCCESS? 

At  the  Meyseys'  next  morning,  all  was  turmoil  and  sur- 
prise. The  servants'  hall  fluttered  with  unwonted  excite- 
ment. No  less  an  event  than  an  elopement  was  suspected. 
Miss  Elsie  had  not  come  down  to  breakfast;  and  when 
Miss  Winifred  went  up,  on  the  lady's  maid's  report,  to  ask 
what  was  the  matter,  she  had  found  the  door  securely 
locked  on  the  inside  and  received  no  answer  to  her  re- 
peated questions.  The  butler,  hastily  summoned  to  the 
rescue,  broke  open  the  lock;  and  Winifred  entered,  to 
find  the  lamp  still  feebly  burning  at  half-height,  and  a 
huddled  confusion  everywhere  pervading  the  disordered 


116  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

room.  Clearly,  some  strange  thing  had  occurred.  Elsie's 
drawers  had  been  opened  and  searched:  the  black  bag 
was  gone  from  the  stand  in  the  corner;  and  the  little 
jewel-case  with  the  silver  shield  on  the  top  was  missing 
from  its  accustomed  place  on  the  dressing-table. 

With  a  sudden  cry,  Winifred  rushed  forward,  terrified. 
Her  first  idea  was  the  usual  feminine  one  of  robbery  and 
murder.  Elsie  was  killed — killed  by  a  burglar.  But  one 
glance  at  the  bed  dispelled  that  illusion ;  it  had  never  been 
slept  in.  The  nightdress  and  the  little  embroidered  night- 
dress bag  in  red  silk  were  neither  of  them  there  in  their 
familiar  fashion.  The  brush  and  comb  had  disappeared 
from  the  base  of  the  looking-glass.  The  hairpins  even 
had  been  removed  from  the  glass  hairpin  box.  These 
indications  seemed  frankly  inconsistent  with  the  theory 
of  mere  intrusive  burglary.  The  enterprising  burglar 
doesn't  make  up  the  beds  of  the  robbed  and  murdered, 
after  pocketing  their  watches;  nor  does  he  walk  off,  as  a 
rule,  with  ordinary  hairbrushes  and  embroidered  night- 
dress-bags. Surprised  and  alarmed,  Winifred  rushed  to 
the  window:  it  was  open  still:  a  branch  of  the  wistaria 
.  lay  broken  on  the  ground,  and  the  mark  of  a  falling  body 
might  be  easily  observed  among  the  plants  and  soil  in 
the  shrubbery  border. 

By  this  time,  the  -Squire  had  appeared  upon  the  scene, 
bringing  in  his  hand  a  letter  for  Winifred.  With  the  cool 
common  sense  of  advancing  years,  he  surveyed  the  room 
in  its  littery  condition,  and  gazed  over  his  daughter's 
shoulder  as  she  read  the  shadowy  and  incoherent  jumble 
of  phrases  Hugh  Massinger  had  strung  together  so  care- 
fully in  Elsie's  name  last  night  at  the  Fisherman's  Rest. 
"Whew!"  he  whistled  to  himself  in  sharp  surprise  as  the 
state  of  the  case  dawned  slowly  upon  him.  "Depend  upon 
it,  there's  a  young  man  at  the  bottom  of  this.  'Cherchez 
la  femme,'  says  the  French  proverb.  When  a  young 
woman's  in  question,  'Cherchez  1'homme'  comes  very 
much  nearer  it.  The  girl's  run  off  with  somebody,  you 
may  be  sure.  I  only  hope  she's  run  off  all  straight  and 
above-board,  and  not  gone  away  with  a  groom  or  a  game- 
keeper or  a  married  clergyman." 

"Papa!"  Winifred  cried,  laying  down  the  letter  in  haste 


WHAT  SUCCESS.  117 

and  bursting  into  tears,  "do  you  think  Mr.  Massinger  can 
have  anything  to  do  with  it?" 

The  Squire  had  been  duly  apprised  last  night  by  Mrs. 
Meysey — in  successive  installments — as  to  the  state  of 
relations  between  Hugh  and  Winifred;  but  his  blunt 
English  nature  cavalierly  rejected  the  suggested  explana- 
tion of  Elsie's  departure,  and  he  brushed  it  aside  at  once 
after  the  fashion  of  his  kind  with  an  easy  "Bless  my  soul! 
no,  child.  The  girl's  run  off  with  some  fool  somewhere. 
It's  always  fools  who  run  off  with  women.  Do  you  think 
a  man  would  be  idiot  enough  to" — he  was  just  going  to 
say,  "propose  to  one  woman  in  the  morning,  and  elope 
with  another  the  evening  after!"  but  he  checked  himself 
in  time,  before  the  faces  of  the  servants,  and  finished  his 
sentence  lamely  by  saying  instead,  "commit  himself  so 
with  a  girl  of  that  sort?" 

"That  wasn't  what  I  meant,  papa,"  Winifred  whispered 
low.  "I  meant,  could  she  have  fancied? You  under- 
stand me." 

The  Squire  gave  a  snort  in  place  of  No  Impossible, 
impossible;  the  young  man  was  so  well  connected.  She 
could  never  have  thought  he  meant  to  make  up  to  her. 
Much  more  likely,  if  it  came  to  that,  the  girl  would  run 
away  -with  him  than  from  him.  Young  women  don't 
really  run  away  from  a  man  because  their  hearts  are 
broken.  They  go  up  to  their  own  bedrooms  instead,  and 
muse  and  mope  over  it,  and  cry  their  eyes  red. 

And  indeed,  the  Squire  remarked  to  himself  inwardly 
on  the  other  hand,  that  if  Hugh  were  minded  to  elope  with 
any  one,  he  would  be  far  more  likely  to  elope  with  the 
heiress  of  Whitestrand  than  with  a  penniless  governess 
like  Elsie  Challoner.  Elopement  implies  parental  oppo- 
sition. Why  the  deuce  should  a  man  take  the  trouble  to 
run  away  with  an  undowered  orphan,  whom  nobody  on 
earth  desires  to  prevent  him  from  marrying  any  day,  in 
the  strictly  correctest  manner,  by  bans  or  license,  at  the 
parish  church  of  her  own  domicile?  The  suggestion  was 
clearly  quite  quixotic.  If  Elsie  had  run  away  with  any 
one,  it  was  neither  from  nor  with  this  young  man  of  Wini- 
fred's, the  Squire  felt  sure,  but  with  the  gardener's  son 
or  with  the  under-gamekeeper. 


118  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

Still,  he  felt  distinctly  relieved  in  his  own  mind  when,  at 
half-past  ten,  Hugh  Massinger  strolled  idly  in,  a  rose  in 
his  buttonhole  and  a  smile  on  his  face — though  a  little 
lame  of  the  left  leg — all  unconscious,  apparently,  that 
anything  out  of  the  common  had  happened  since  last 
night  at  the  great  house. 

Hugh  was  one  of  the  very  finest  and  most  finished 
actors  then  performing  on  the  stage  of  social  England; 
but  even  he  had  a  difficult  part  to  play  that  stormy  morn- 
ing, and  he  went  through  his  role,  taking  it  altogether, 
with  but  indifferent  success,  though  with  sufficient  candor 
to  float  him  through  unsuspected  somehow.  The  cir- 
cumstances, indeed,  were  terribly  against  him.  When 
he  fell  the  night  before  from  Elsie's  window,  he  had 
bruised  and  shaken  himself,  already  fatigued  as  he  was  by 
his  desperate  swim  and  his  long  unconsciousness;  and 
it  was  with  a  violent  effort,  goaded  on  by  the  sense  of 
absolute  necessity  alone,  that  he  picked  himself  up,  black 
bag  and  all,  and  staggered  home,  with  one  ankle  strained, 
to  his  rooms  at  the  Stannaways'.  Once  arrived  there, 
after  that  night  of  terrors  and  manifold  adventures,  he 
locked  away  Elsie's  belongings  cautiously  in  a  back  cup- 
board— incriminating  evidence,  indeed,  if  anything  should 
ever  happen  to  come  out — and  flung  himself  half  undressed 
at  last  in  a  fever  of  fatigue  upon  the  bed  in  the  corner. 

Strange  to  say  he  slept — slept  soundly.  Worn  out  with 
overwork  and  exertion  and  faintness,  he  slept  on  peace- 
fully like  a  tired  child,  till  at  nine  o'clock  Mrs.  Stannaway 
rapped  hard  at  the  door  to  rouse  him.  Then  he  woke 
with  a  start  from  a  heavy  sleep,  his  head  aching,  but 
drowsy  still,  and  with  feverish  pains  in  all  his  limbs  from 
his  desperate  swim  and  his  long  immersion.  He  was  quite 
unfit  to  get  up  and  dress;  but  he  rose  for  all  that,  as  if  all 
was  well,  and  even  pretended  to  eat  some  breakfast,  though 
a  cup  of  tea  was  the  only  thing  he  could  really  gulp  down 
his  parched  throat  in  his  horror  and  excitement.  Last 
night's  events  came  clearly  home  to  him  now  in  their 
naked  ghastliness,  and  with  sinking  heart  and  throbbing 
head,  he  realized  the  full  extent  of  his  guilt  and  his  danger, 
the  depth  of  his  remorse,  and  the  profundity  of  his  foliy. 

Elsie  was  gone — that  was  his  first  thought.     There  was 


WHAT  SUCCESS.  119 

no  more  an  Elsie  to  reckon  with  in  all  this  world.  Her 
place  was  blank — how  blank  he  could  never  before  have 
truly  realized.  The  whole  world  itself  was  blank  too. 
What  he  loved  best  in  it  all  was  gone  clean  out  of  it 

Elsie,  Elsie,  poor  drowned,  lost  Elsie!  His  heart  ached 
as  he  thought  to  himself  of  Elsie,  gasping  and  struggling 
in  that  cold,  cold  sea,  among  those  fierce  wild  breakers, 
for  one  last  breath — and  knew  it  was  he  who  had  driven 
her,  by  his  baseness  and  wickedness  and  cruelty,  to  that 
terrible  end  of  a  sweet  young  existence.  He  had  darkened 
the  sun  in  heaven  for  himself  henceforth  and  forever.  He 
had  sown  the  wind,  and  he  should  reap  the  whirlwind. 
He  hated  himself;  he  hated  Winifred;  he  hated  everybody 
and  everything  but  Elsie.  Poor  martyred  Elsie!  Beauti- 
ful Elsie!  His  own  sweet,  exquisite,  noble  Elsie!  He 
would  have  given  the  whole  world  at  that  moment  to 
bring  her  back  again.  But  the  past  was  irrevocable,  quite 
irrevocable.  There  was  nothing  for  a  strong  man  now  to 
do  but  to  brace  himself  up  and  face  the  present. 

"If  not,  what  resolution  from  despair?" — That  was  all 
the  comfort  his  philosophy  could  give  him. 

Elsie's  things  were  locked  up  in  the  cupboard.  If  sus- 
picion lighted  upon  him  in  any  way  now,  it  was  all  up 
with  him.  Elsie's  bag  and  jewel-case  and  clothing  in  the 
cupboard  would  alone  be  more  than  enough  to  hang  him. 
Hang  him!  What  did  he  care  any  longer  for  hanging? 
They  might  hang  him  and  welcome,  if  they  chose  to  try. 
For  sixpence  he  would  save  them  the  trouble,  and  drown 
himself.  He  wanted  to  die.  It  was  fate  that  prevented 
him.  Why  hadn't  he  drowned  when  he  might,  last  night? 
An  ugly  proverb  that,  about  the  man  who  is  born  to  be 
hanged,  etc.,  etc.  Some  of  these  proverbs  are  downright 
rude — positively  vulgar  in  the  coarse  simplicity  and  direct- 
ness of  their  language. 

He  gulped  down  the  tea  with  a  terrible  effort:  it  was 
scalding  hot,  and  it  burnt  his  mouth,  but  he  scarcely 
noticed  it.  Then  he  pulled  about  the  sole  on  his  fork  for 
a  moment,  to  dirty  the  plate,  and  boning  it  roughly,  gave 
the  flesh  to  the  cat,  who  ate  it  purring  on  the  rug  by  the 
fireplace.  He  waited  for  a  reasonable  interval  next  before 
ringing  the  bell — it  takes  a  lone  man  ten  minutes  to  break- 


120  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

fast — but  as  soon  as  that  necessary  time  had  passed,  he  put 
on  his  hat,  crushing  it  down  on  his  head,  and  with  fiery 
sou!  and  bursting  temples,  strolled  up,  with  the  jauntiest 
air  he  could  assume,  to  the  Meyseys'  after  breakfast. 

Winifred  met  him  at  the  front  door.  His  new  sweet- 
heart was  pale  and  terrified,  but  not  now  crying.  Hugh 
felt  himself  constrained  to  presume  upon  their  novel  rela- 
tions and  insist  upon  a  kiss — she  would  expect  it  of  him. 
It  was  the  very  first  time  he  had  ever  kissed  her,  and,  oh 
evil  omen,  it  revolted  him  at  last  that  he  had  now  to  do  it 
— with  Elsie's  body  tossed  about  that  very  moment  by  the 
cruel  waves  upon  that  angry  bar  or  on  the  cold  sea-bottom. 
It  was  treason  to  Elsie — to  poor  dead  Elsie — that  he 
should  ever  kiss  any  other  woman.  His  kisses  were  hers, 
his  heart  was  hers,  forever  and  ever.  But  what  would  you 
have?  He  looked  on,  as  he  had  said,  as  if  from  above,  at 
circumstances  wafting  his  own  character  and  their  actions 
hither  and  thither  wherever  they  willed — and  this  was  the 
pass  to  which  they  had  now  brought  him.  He  must  play 
out  the  game — play  it  out  to  the  end,  whatever  it  might 
cost  him. 

Winifred  took  the  kiss  mechanically  and  coldly,  and 
handed  him  Elsie's  letter — his  own  forged  letter — without 
one  word  of  preface  or  explanation.  Hugh  was  glad  she 
did  so  at  the  very  first  moment — it  allowed  him  to  relieve 
himself  at  once  from  the  terrible  strain  of  the  affected 
gaiety  he  w?as  keeping  up  just  to  save  appearances.  He 
couldn't  have  kept  it  up  much  longer.  His  countenance 
fell  visibly  as  he  read  the  note — or  pretended  to  read  it, 
for  he  had  no  need  really  to  glance  at  its  words — every 
word  of  them  all  now  burnt  into  the  very  fibers  and  fabric 
of  his  being. 

"Why,  what  does  this  mean,  Miss  Meysey — that  is  to 
say,  Winifred?"  he  corrected  himself  hurriedly.  "Elsie 
isn't  gone?  She's  here  this  morning  as  usual,  surely?'' 

As  he  said  it  he  almost  hoped  it  might  be  true.  He  could 
hardly  believe  the  horrible,  horrible  reality.  His  face  was 
pale  enough  in  all  conscience  now — a  little  too  pale,  per- 
haps, for  the  letter  alone  to  justify.  Winifred,  eyeing  him 
close,  saw  at  a  glance  that  he  was  deeply  moved. 

"She's  gone,"  she  said,  not  too  tenderly  either.    "She 


WHAT  SUCCESS.  121 

went  away  last  night,  taking  her  things  with  her — at  least 
some  of  them. — Do  you  know  where  she's  gone,  Mr. 
Massinger?  Has  she  written  to  you,  as  she  promises?" 

"Not  Mr.  Massinger,"  Hugh  corrected  gravely,  with  a 
livid  white  face,  yet  affecting  jauntiness.  "It  was  agreed 
yesterday  it  should  be  'Hugh'  in  future. — No;  I  don't 
at  all  know  where  she  is,  Winifred;  I  wish  I  did."  He 
said  it  seriously.  "She  hasn't  written  a  single  line  to  me." 

Hugh's  answer  had  the  very  ring  of  truth  in  it — for 
indeed  it  was  true;  and  Winifred,  watching  him  with  a 
woman's  closeness,  felt  certain  in  her  own  mind  that  in 
this  at  least  he  was  not  deceiving  her.  But  he  certainly 
grew  unnecessarily  pale.  Cousinly  affection  would  hardly 
account  for  so  much  disturbance  of  the  vaso-motor  system. 
She  questioned  him  closely  as  to  all  that  had  passed  or 
might  have  passed  between  them  these  weeks  or  earlier. 
Did  he  know  anything  of  Elsie's  movements  or  feelings? 
Hugh,  holding  the  letter  firmly  in  one  hand,  and  playing 
with  the  key  of  that  incriminating  cupboard,  in  his  waist- 
coat pocket,  loosely  with  the  other,  passed  with  credit  his 
examination.  He  had  never,  he  said,  with  gay  flippancy 
almost,  been  really  intimate  with  Elsie,  talked  confidences 
with  Elsie,  or  received  any  from  Elsie  in  return.  She  did 
not  know  of  his  engagement  to  Winifred.  Yet  he  feared, 
whatever  her  course  might  be,  some  man  or  other  must 
be  its  leading  motive.  Perhaps — but  this  with  the  utmost 
hesitation — \Varren  Relf  and  she  might  have  struck  up  a 
love  affair. 

He  felt,  of  course,  it  was  a  serious  ordeal.  Apart  from 
the  profounder  background  of  possible  consequences — 
the  obvious  charge  of  having  got  rid  of  Elsie — two  other 
unpleasant  notions  stared  him  full  in  the  face.  The  first 
was,  that  the  Meyseys  might  suspect  him  of  having  driven 
Elsie  to  run  away  by  his  proposal  to  Winifred.  But  sup- 
posing even  then  they  never  thought  of  that — which  was 
highly  unlikely,  considering  the  close  sequence  of  the  two 
events  and  the  evident  drift  of  Winifred's  questions — 
there  still  remained  the  second  unpleasantness — that  his 
cousin,  through  whom  alone  he  had  been  introduced 
to  the  familyy  should  have  disappeared  under  such  mys- 
terious circumstances.  Was  it  likely  they  would  wish 


122  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

their  daughter  to  marry  a  man  among  whose  relations 
such  odd  and  unaccountable  things  were  likely  to  happen  ? 

For,  strangely  enough,  Hugh  still  wished  to  marry 
Winifred.  Though  he  loathed  her  in  his  heart  just  then 
for  not  being  Elsie,  and  even,  by  some  illogical  twist  of 
thought,  for  having  been  the  unconscious  cause  of  Elsie's 
misfortunes;  though  he  would  have  died  himself  far  rather 
than  lived  without  Elsie;  yet,  if  he  lived,  he  wished  for 
all  that  to  marry  Winifred.  For  one  thing,  it  was  the 
programme;  and  because  it  was  the  programme,  he 
wanted,  with  his  strict  business  habits,  to  carry  it  out  to 
the  bitter  end.  For  another  thing,  his  future  all  depended 
upon  it;  and  though  he  didn't  care  a  straw  at  present  for 
his  future,  he  went  on  acting,  by  the  pure  force  of  habit  in 
a  prudent  man,  as  deliberately  and  cautiously  as  if  he  had 
still  the  same  serious  stake  in  existence  as  ever.  He 
wasn't  going  to  chuck  up  everything  all  at  once,  just 
because  life  was  now  an  utter  blank  to  him.  He  would 
go  on  as  usual  in  the  regular  groove,  and  pretend  to  the 
world  he  was  still  ever)'  bit  as  interested  and  engaged  in 
life  as  formerly. 

So  he  brazened  things  out  with  the  Meyseys  somehow, 
and  to  his  immense  astonishment,  he  soon  discovered  they 
were  ready  dupes,  in  no  way  set  against  him  by  this  un- 
toward accident.  On  the  contrary,  instead  of  finding,  as 
he  had  expected,  that  they  considered  this  delinquency 
on  the  part  of  his  cousin  told  against  himself  as  a  remote 
partner  of  her  original  sin,  by  right  of  heredity,  he  found 
the  Squire  and  Mrs.  Meysey  nervously  anxious  for  their 
part  lest  he,  her  nearest  male  relative,  should  suspect  them 
of  having  inefficiently  guarded  his  cousin's  youth,  inex- 
perience, and  innocence.  They  were  all  apology,  where 
he  had  looked  for  coldness;  they  were  all  on  the  defen- 
sive, where  he  had  expected  to  see  them  vigorously  carry- 
ing the  war  into  Africa.  One  thing,  above  all  others,  he 
noted  with  profound  satisfaction — nobody  seemed  to 
doubt  for  one  second  the  genuineness  and  authenticity  of 
the  forged  letter.  Whatever  else  they  doubted,  the  letter 
was  safe.  They  all  took  it  fully  for  granted  that  Elsie 
had  gone,  of  her  own  free-will,  gone  to  the  four  winds, 
with  no  trace  left  of  her;  and  that  Hugh,  in  the  perfect 


WHAT  SUCCESS.  123 

innocence  of  his  heart,  knew  no  more  than  they  them- 
selves about  it. 

Nothing  else,  of  course,  was  talked  of  at  Whitestrand 
that  livelong  day;  and  before  night  the  gossips  and 
quidnuncs  of  the  village  inn  and  the  servants'  hall  had  a 
complete  theory  of  their  own  account  for  the  episode. 
Their  theory  was  simple,  romantic,  and  improbable.  It 
had  the  dearly  beloved  spice  of  mystery  about  it.  The 
coastguard  had  noticed  that  a  ship,  name  unknown,  with 
a  red  light  at  the  masthead  and  a  green  on  the  port  bow, 
had  put  in  hastily  about  nine  o'clock  the  night  before, 
near  the  big  poplar.  The  Whitestrand  cronies  had  mag- 
nified this  fact  before  nightfall,  through  various  additions 
of  more  or  less  fanciful  observers  or  non-observers — for 
fiction,  too,  counts  for  something — into  a  consistent  story 
of  a  most  orthodox  elopement.  Miss  Elsie  had  let  herself 
down  by  a  twisted  sheet  out  of  her  own  window,  to  escape 
observation — some  said  a  rope,  but  the  majority  voted 
for  the  twisted  sheet,  as  more  strictly  in  accordance  with 
established  precedent — she  had  slipped  away  to  the  big 
tree,  where  a  gentleman's  yacht,  from  parts  unknown,  had 
put  in  cautiously,  before  a  terrible  gale,  by  previous  ar- 
rangement, and  had  carried  her  over  through  a  roaring 
sea  across  to  the  opposite  coast  of  Flanders.  Detail  after 
detail  grew  apace ;  and  before  long  there  were  some  who 
even  admitted  to  having  actually  seen  a  foreign-looking 
gentleman  in  a  dark  cloak — the  cloak  is  a  valuable  ro- 
mantic property  upon  such  occasions — catch  a  white- 
robed  lady  in  his  stout  arms  as  she  leaped  a  wild  leap  into 
an  open  boat  from  the  spray-covered  platform  of  the 
gnarled  poplar  roots.  Hugh  smiled  a  grim  and  hideous 
smile  of  polite  incredulity  as  he  listened  to  these  final  imag- 
inative embellishments  of  the  popular  fancy;  but  he  ac- 
cepted in  outline  the  romantic  tale  as  the  best  possible 
version  of  Elsie's  disappearance  for  public  acceptance.  It 
kept  the  police  at  least  from  poking  their  noses  too  deep 
into  this  family  affair,  and  it  freed  him  from  any  possible 
tinge  of  blame  in  the  eyes  of  the  Meyseys.  Nobody  can 
be  found  fault  with  for  somebody  else's  elopement.  Two 
points  at  least  seemed  fairly  certain  to  the  Whitestrand 
intelligence:  first,  that  Miss  Elsie  had  run  away  of  her 


124  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

own  accord,' in  the  absence  of  the  family;  and  second, 
that  she  neither  went  by  road  nor  rail,  so  that  only  the  sea 
or  river  appeared  to  be  left  by  way  of  a  possible  expla- 
nation. 

The  Meyseys,  of  course,  were  less  credulous  as  to 
detail ;  but  even  the  Meyseys  suspected  nothing  serious  in 
the  matter.  That  Elsie  had  gone  was  all  they  knew; 
why  she  went,  was  a  profound  mystery  to  them. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 
LIVE  OR  DIE? 

And  all  this  time,  what  had  become  of  Elsie  and  the  men 
in  the  "Mud-Turtle?" 

Hugh  Massinger,  for  his  part,  took  it  for  granted,  from 
the  moment  he  came  to  himself  again  on  the  bank  of  the 
salt  marshes,  that  Elsie's  body  was  lying  unseen  full 
fathoms  five  beneath  the  German  Ocean,  and  that  no 
tangible  evidence  of  his  crime  and  his  deceit  would  ever 
be  forthcoming  to  prove  the  naked  truth  in  all  its  native 
ugliness  against  him.  From  time  to  time,  to  be  sure, 
one  disquieting  thought  for  a  moment  occurred  to  his 
uneasy  mind:  a  back-current  might  perhaps  cast  up  the 
corpse  upon  the  long  dike  where  he  had  himself  been 
stranded,  or  the  breakers  on  the  bar  might  fling  it  ashore 
upon  the  great  sands  that  stretched  for  miles  on  either 
side  of  the  river  mouth  at  Whitestrand.  But  to  these 
terrible  imaginings  of  the  night-watches,  the  more  judicial 
functions  of  his  waking  brain  refused  their  assent  on  closer 
consideration.  He  himself  had  floated  through  that 
seething  turmoil  simply  because  he  knew  how  to  float. 
A  woman,  caught  wildly  by  the  careering  current  in  its 
headlong  course,  would  naturally  give  a  few  mad  strug- 
gles for  life,  gasping  and  gulping  and  flinging  up  her 
hands,  as  those  untaught  to  swim  invariably  do;  but 
when  once  the  stream  had  carried  her  under,  she  would 
never  rise  again  from  so  profound  and  measureless  a  depth 
of  water.  He  did  not  in  any  way  doubt  that  the  body  had 


LIVE  OR  DIE?  125 

been  swept  away  seaward  with  irresistible  might  by  the 
first  force  of  the  outward  flow,  and  that  it  now  lay  huddled 
at  the  bottom  of  the  German  Ocean  in  some  deep  pool, 
whence  dredge  or  diver  could  never  by  human  means 
recover  it. 

How  differently  would  he  have  thought  and  acted  all 
along  had  he  only  known  that  Warren  Relf  and  his  com- 
panion on  the  "Mud-Turtle"  had  found  Elsie's  body  float- 
ing on  the  surface,  a  limp  burden,  not  half  an  hour  after 
its  first  immersion. 

That  damning  fact  rendered  all  his  bold  precautions 
and  daring  plans  for  the  future  worse  than  useless.  As 
things  really  stood,  he  was  plotting  and  scheming  for  his 
own  condemnation.  Through  the  mere  accident  that 
Elsie's  body  had  been  recovered,  he  was  heaping  up  sus- 
picious circumstantial  evidence  against  himself  by  the 
forged  letter,  by  the  night  escapade,  by  the  wild  design 
of  entering  Elsie's  bedroom  at  the  Hall,  by  the  mad  idea 
of  concealing  at  his  own  lodgings  her  purloined  clothes 
and  jewelry  and  belongings.  If  ever  an  inquiry  should 
come  to  be  raised  in  the  way  that  Elsie  met  her  death,  the 
very  cunning  with  which  Hugh  had  fabricated  a  false 
scent  would  recoil  in  the  end  most  sternly  against  him- 
self. The  spoor  that  he  scattered  would  come  home  to 
track  him.  Could  any  one  believe  that  an  innocent  man 
would  so  carefully  surround  himself  with  an  enveloping 
atmosphere  of  suspicious  circumstances  out  of  pure 
wantonness? 

And  yet,  technically  speaking,  Hugh  was  in  reality  quite 
innocent.  Murderer  as  he  felt  himself,  he  had  done  no 
murder.  Morally  guilty  though  he  might  be  of  the  causes 
which  led  to  Elsie's  death,  there  was  nothing  of  legal  or 
formal  crime  to  object  against  him  in  any  court  of  so- 
called  justice.  Every  man  has  a  right  to  marry  whom 
he  will;  and  if  a  young  woman  with  whom  he  has  cau- 
tiously and  scrupulously  avoided  contracting  any  definite 
engagement,  chooses  to  consider  herself  aggrieved  by  his 
conduct,  and  to  go  incontinently,  whether  by  accident  or 
design,  and  drown  herself  in  chagrin  and  despair  and  mis- 
ery, why,  that  is  clearly  no  fault  of  his,  however  much  she 
may  regard  herself  as  injured  by  him.  The  law  has  noth- 


126  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

ing  to  do  with  sentiment.  Judges  quote  no  precedent 
from  Shelley  or  Tennyson.  If  Hugh  had  told  the  whole 
truth,  he  would  at  least  have  been  free  from  legal  blame. 
By  his  extraordinary  precautions  against  possible  doubts, 
he  had  only  succeeded  in  making  himself  seem  guilty  in 
the  eyes  even  of  the  unromantic  lawyers. 

When  Warren  Relf  drew  Elsie  Challoner,  a  huddled 
mass,  on  board  the  "Mud-Turtle,"  the  surf  was  rolling  so 
high  on  the  bar  that,  with  one  accord,  he  and  Potts  decided 
together  it  would  be  impossible  for  them,  against  such  a 
sea,  to  run  up  the  tidal  mouth  to  Whitestrand.  Their 
piteous  little  dot  of  a  craft  could  never  face  it.  Wind  had 
veered  to  the  southeast.  The  only  way  possible  now  was 
to  head  her  round  again,  and  make  before  the  shifting 
breeze  for  Lowestoft,  the  nearest  northward  harbor  of 
refuge. 

It  was  an  awful  moment.  The  sea  roared  onward 
through  the  black  night;  the  cross-drift  whirled  and 
wreathed  and  eddied;  the  blinding  foam  lashed  itself  in 
volleys  through  the  dusk  and  gloom  against  their  quiver- 
ing broadside.  And  those  two  men,  nothing  daunted, 
drove  the  "Mud-Turtle"  once  more  across  the  flank  of 
the  wind,  and  fronted  her  bows  in  a  direct  line  for  the 
port  of  Lowestoft,  in  spite  of  wind  and  sea  and  tempest. 

But  how  were  they  to  manage  meanwhile,  in  that  toss- 
ing cockleshell  of  a  boat,  about  the  lady  they  had  scarcely 
rescued?  That  Elsie  was  drowned,  Warren  Relf  didn't 
for  a  moment  doubt;  still,  in  every  case  of  apparent 
drowning  it  is  the  duty  to  make  sure  life  is  really  extinct 
before  one  gives  up  all  hope;  and  that  duty  was  a  dif- 
ficult one  indeed  to  perform  on  board  a  tiny  yawl,  pitching 
and  rolling  before  a  violent  gale,  and  manned  against  the 
manifold  dangers  of  the  sea  by  exactly  two  amateur  sailors. 
But  there  was  no  help  for  it.  The  ship  must  drift  with 
one  mariner  only.  Potts  did  his  best  for  the  moment  to 
navigate  the  dancing  little  yawl  alone,  now  that  they  let 
her  scud  before  the  full  force  of  the  favoring  wind,  under 
little  canvas;  while  Warren  Relf,  staggering  and  steady- 
ing himself  in  the  cabin  below,  rolled  the  body  round  in 
nigs  and  blankets,  and  tried  his  utmost  to  pour  a  few  drops 


LIVE  OR  DIE?  127 

of  brandy  down  the  pale  lips  of  the  beautiful  girl  who 
lay  listless  and  apparently  lifeless  before  him. 

It  was  to  him  indeed  a  terrible  task ;  for  from  the  first 
moment  when  the  painter  set  eyes  on  Elsie  Challoner,  he 
had  felt  some  nameless  charm  about  her  face  and  manner, 
some  tender  cadence  in  her  musical  voice,  that  affected  him 
as  no  other  face  and  no  other  voice  had  ever  affected  him 
or  could  ever  affect  him.  He  was  not  exactly  in  love  with 
Elsie — love  with  him  was  a  plant  of  slower  growth — but 
he  was  fascinated,  impressed,  interested,  charmed  by  her. 
And  to  sit  there  alone  in  that  tossing  cabin,  with  Elsie 
cold  and  stiff  on  the  berth  before  him,  was  to  him  more 
utterly  painful  and  unmanning  than  he  could  ever  have 
imagined  a  week  or  two  earlier. 

He  did  not  doubt  one  instant  the  true  story  of  the  case. 
He  felt  instinctively  in  his  heart  that  Hugh  Massinger 
had  shown  her  his  inmost  nature,  and  that  this  was  the 
final  and  horrible  result  of  Hugh's  airy  easy  protestations. 

As  he  sat  there,  watching  by  the  light  of  one  oil  lamp, 
and  rubbing  her  hands  and  arms  gently  with  his  rough 
hard  palms,  he  saw  a  sudden  tumultuous  movement  of 
Elsie's  bosom,  a  sort  of  gasp  that  convulsed  her  lungs — 
a  deep  inspiration,  with  a  gurgling  noise;  and  then,  like 
a  flash,  it  was  borne  in  upon  him  suddenly  that  all  was 
not  over — that  Elsie  might  yet  be  saved — that  she  was 
still  living. 

It  was  a  terrible  hour,  a  terrible  position.  If  only  they 
had  had  one  more  hand  on  board,  one  more  person  to 
help  him  with  the  task  of  recovering  her!  But  how  could 
he  ever  hope  to  revive  that  fainting  girl,  alone  and  un- 
aided, while  the  ship  drifted  on,  single-handed,  tossing 
and  plunging  before  that  stiffening  breeze?  He  almost 
despaired  of  being  able  to  effect  anything.  Yet  life  is 
life,  and  he  would  nerve  himself  up  for  it.  He  would  try 
his  best,  and  thank  heaven  this  boisterous  wind  that  roared 
through  the  rigging  would  carry  them  quick  and  safe  to 
Lowestoft. 

His  mother  and  sister  were  still  there.  If  he  once  could 
get  Miss  Challoner  safe  to  land,  they  might  even  now 
hope  to  recover  her.  Where  there's  life,  there's  hope. 
But  what  hope  in  the  dimly  lighted  cabin  of  a  toy  yawl, 


12g  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

just  fit  for  two  hardy  weather-beaten  men  to  rough  it 
hardly  in,  and  pitching  with  wild  plunges  before  as  fierce 
a  gale  as  ever  ploughed  the  yeasty  surface  of  the  German 
Ocean? 

He  rushed  to  the  companion-ladder  as  well  as  he  was 
able,  steadying  himself  on  his  sea-legs  by  the  rail  as  he 
went,  and  shouted  aloud  in  breathless  excitement:  "Potts, 
she's  alive!  she's  not  drowned!  Can  you  manage  the  ship 
anyhow  still,  while  I  try  my  best  to  bring  her  round 
again?" 

Potts  answered  back  with  a  cheery:  "All  right.  There's 
nothing  much  to  do  but  to  let  her  run.  She's  out  of  our 
hands,  for  good  or  evil.  The  admiral  of  the  fleet  could 
do  no  more  for  her.  If  we're  swamped,  we're  swamped; 
and  if  we're  not,  we're  running  clear  for  Lowestoft  har- 
bor. Give  her  sea-room  enough,  and  she'll  go  anywhere. 
The  storm  don't  live  that'll  founder  the  'Mud-Turtle.' 
I'll  land  you  or  drown  you,  but  anyhow  I'll  manage  her." 

With  that  manful  assurance  satisfying  his  soul,  Warren 
Relf  turned  back,  his  heart  on  fire,  to  the  narrow  cabin 
and  flung  himself  once  more  on  his  knees  before  Elsie. 

A  more  terrible  night  was  seldom  remembered  by  the 
oldest  sailors  on  the  North  Sea.  Smacks  were  wrecked 
and  colliers  foundered,  and  a  British  gunboat,  manned  by 
the  usual  complement  of  scientific  officers,  dashed  herself 
full  tilt  in  mad  fury  against  the  very  base  of  a  first-class 
lighthouse;  but  the  taut  little  "Mud-Turtle,"  true  to  her 
reputation  as  the  stanchest  craft  that  sailed  the  British 
channels,  rode  it  bravely  out,  and  battled  her  way  tri- 
umphantly, about  one  in  the  morning,  through  the  big 
waves  that  rolled  up  the  mouth  of  Lowestoft  harbor. 
Potts  had  navigated  her  single-handed  amid  storm  and 
breakers,  and  \Varren  Relf,  in  the  cabin  below,  had  almost 
succeeded  in  making  Elsie  Challoner  open  her  eyes  again. 

But  as  soon  as  the  excitement  of  that  wild  race  for  life 
was  fairly  over,  and  the  "Mud-Turtle"  lay  in  calm  water 
once  more,  with  perfect  safety,  the  embarrassing  nature 
of  the  situation,  from  the  conventional  point  of  view,  burst 
suddenly  for  the  first  time  upon  Warren  Relf  s  astonished 
vision;  and  he  began  to  reflect  that  for  two  young  men 
to  arrive  in  port  about  the  small  hours  of  the  morning, 


LIVE  OR  DIE?  129 

with  a  young  lady  very  imperfectly  known  to  either  of 
them,  lying  in  a  dead  faint  on  their  cabin  bunk,  was,  to 
say  the  least  of  it,  a  fact  open  to  social  and  even  to  judicial 
misconstruction.  It's  all  very  well  to  say  offhand,  you 
picked  the  lady  up  in  the  German  Ocean;  but  Society  is 
apt  to  move  the  previous  question,  how  did  she  get  there? 
Still,  something  must  be  done  with  the  uncovenanted 
passenger.  There  was  nothing  for  it,  Warren  Relf  felt, 
even  at  that  late  season  of  the  night,  but  to  carry  the  half- 
inanimate  patient  up  to  his  mother's  lodgings,  and  to  send 
for  a  doctor  to  bring  her  round  at  the  earliest  possible 
opportunity. 

When  Elsie  was  aware  of  herself  once  more,  it  was 
broad  daylight;  and  she  lay  on  a  bed  in  a  strange  room, 
dimly  conscious  that  two  women  whom  she  did  not  know 
were  bending  tenderly  and  lovingly  over  her.  The  elder, 
seen  through  a  haze  of  half-closed  eyelashes,  was  a  sweet 
old  lady  with  snow-white  hair,  and  a  gentle  motherly  ex- 
pression in  her  soft  gray  eyes:  one  of  the  few  women 
who  know  how  to  age  graciously — 

"Whose  fair  old  face  grew  more  fair 
As  Point  and  Flanders  yellow." 

The  younger  girl  was  about  Elsie's  own  time  of  life,  who 
looked  as  sisterly  as  the  other  looked  motherly;  a  pleas- 
ant-faced girl,  not  exactly  pretty,  but  with  a  clear  brown 
skin,  a  cheek  like  the  sunny  side  of  peaches,  and  a  smile 
that  showed  a  faultless  row  of  teeth  within,  besides  light- 
ing up  and  irradiating  the  whole  countenance  with  a 
charming  sense  of  kindliness  and  girlish  innocence.  In  a 
single  word  it  was  a  winning  face.  Elsie  lay  with  her 
eyes  half  open,  looking  up  at  the  face  through  her  crossed 
eyelashes,  for  many  minutes,  not  realizing  in  any  way  her 
present  position,  but  conscious  only,  in  a  dimly  pleased 
and  dreamy  fashion,  that  the  face  seemed  to  soothe  and 
comfort  and  console  her. 

Soothe  and  comfort  and  console  her  for  what?  She 
hardly  knew.  Some  deep-seated  pain  in  her  inner  na- 
ture— some  hurt  she  had  had  in  her  tenderest  feelings — 
a  horrible  aching  blank  and  void. — She  remembered  now 


130  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

that  something  unspeakable  and  incredible  had  happened. 
— The  sun  had  grown  suddenly  dark  iri  heaven. — She  had 
been  sitting  by  the  waterside  with  dear  Hugh — as  she 
thought  of  the  name,  that  idolized  name,  a  smile  played  for 
a  moment  faintly  round  the  corners  of  her  mouth ;  and  the 
older  lady,  still  seen  half  unconsciously  through  the  chink 
in  the  eyelids,  whispered  in  an  audible  tone  to  the  younger 
and  nearer  one:  "She's  coming  round,  Edie.  She's  wak- 
ing now.  I  hope,  poor  dear,  she  won't  be  dreadfully 
frightened,  when  she  sees  only  two  strangers  by  the  bed 
beside  her." 

"Frightened  at  you,  mother,"  the  other  voice  answered, 
soft  and  low,  as  in  a  pleasant  dream.  "Why,  nobody  on 
earth  could  ever  be  anything  but  delighted  to  wrake  up 
anywhere  and  find  you,  with  your  dear  sweet  old  face, 
sitting  by  their  bedside." 

Elsie,  still  peering  with  half  her  pupils  only  through  the 
closed  lids,  smiled  to  herself  once  more  at  the  gentle  mur- 
mur of  those  pleasant  voices,  both  of  them  tender  and 
womanly  and  musical,  and  went  on  to  herself  placidly 
with  her  own  imaginings. 

Sitting  by  the  waterside  with  her  dear  Hugh — 

dear,  dear  Hugh — that  prince  of  men.  How  handsome 
he  was;  and  how  clever,  and  how  generous!  And  Hugh 
had  begun  to  tell  her  something.  Eh!  but  something! 
What  was  it?  What  was  it?  She  couldn't  remember; 
only  she  knew  it  was  something  terrible,  something  dis- 
astrous, something  unutterable,  something  killing.  And 
then  she  rushed  away  from  him,  mad  with  terror,  toward 
the  big  tree,  and — 

Ah! 

It  was  an  awful,  heartbroken,  heartrending  cry.  Com- 
ing to  herself  suddenly,  as  the  whole  truth  flashed  like 
lightning  once  more  across  her  bewildered  brain,  the  poor 
girl  flung  up  her  arms,  raised  herself  wildly  erect  in  the 
bed,  and  stared  around  her  with  a  horrible  vacant,  mad- 
dened look,  as  if  all  her  life  were  cut  at  once  from  under 
her.  Both  of  the  strangers  recognized  instinctively  what 
that  look  meant.  It  was  the  look  and  the  cry  of  a  crushed 
life.  If  ever  they  had  harbored  a  single  thought  of  blame 
against  that  poor  wounded,  bleeding,  torn  heart  for  what 


LIVE  OR  DIE?  131 

seemed  like  a  hasty  attempt  at  self-murder,  it  was  dissi- 
pated in  a  moment  by  that  terrible  voice — the  voice  of  a 
goaded,  distracted,  irresponsible  creature,  from  whom  all- 
consciousness  or  thought  of  right  and  wrong,  of  life  and 
death,  of  sense  and  movement,  of  motive  and  consequence, 
has  been  stunned  at  one  blow  by  some  deadly  act  of 
undeserved  cruelty  and  unexpected  wickedness. 

The  tears  ran  unchecked  in  silent  sympathy  down  the 
women's  flushed  cheeks. 

Mrs.  Relf  leaned  over  and  caught  her  in  her  arms.  "My 
poor  child,"  she  whispered,  laying  Elsie's  head  with  moth- 
erly tenderness  on  her  own  soft  shoulder,  and  soothing 
the  girl's  pallid  white  face  with  her  gentle  old  hand,  "cry 
cry,  cry  if  you  can!  Don't  hold  back  your  tears;  let 
them  run,  darling.  It'll  do  you  good. — Cry,  cry,  my 
child — we're  all  friends  here.  Don't  be  afraid  of  us." 

Elsie  never  knew,  in  the  agony  of  the  moment,  where 
she  was  or  how  she  came  there;  but  nestling  her  head 
on  Mrs.  Relf's  shoulder,  and  fain  of  the  sympathy  that 
gentle  soul  extended  her  so  easily,  she  gave  free  vent 
to  her  pent-up  passion,  and  let  her  bosom  sob  itself  out 
in  great  bursts  and  throbs  of  choking  grief;  while  the 
two  women,  who  had  never  till  that  very  morning  seen 
her  fair  face,  cried  and  sobbed  silently  in  mute  concert  by 
her  side  for  many,  many  minutes  together. 

"Have  you  no  mother,  dear?"  Mrs.  Relf  whispered 
through  her  tears  at  last;  and  Elsie,  finding  her  voice 
with  difficulty,  murmured  back  in  a  choked  and  blinded 
tone:  "I  never  knew  my  mother." 

"Then  Edie  and  I  will  be  mother  and  sister  to  you," 
the  beautiful  old  lady  answered,  with  a  soft  caress.  "You 
mustn't  talk  any  more  now.  The  doctor  would  be  very, 
very  angry  with  me  for  letting  you  talk  and  cry  even  this 
little  bit.  But  crying's  good  for  one  when  one's  heart's  sore. 
I  know,  my  child,  your's  is  sore  now.  When  you're  a  great 
deal  better,  you'll  tell  us  all  about  it. — Edie,  some  more 
beef-tea  and  brandy. — We've  been  feeding  you  with  it 
all  night,  dear,  with  a  wet  feather. — You  can  drink  a  little, 
I  hope,  now.  You  must  take  a  good  drink,  and  lie  back 
quietly." 

Elsie  smiled  a  faint  sad  smile.    The  world  was  all  lost 


132  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

and  gone  for  her  now ;  but  still  she  liked  these  dear  souls' 
sweet  quiet  sympathy.  As  Edie  glided  across  the  room 
noiselessly  to  fetch  the  cup,  and  brought  it  over  and  held 
it  to  her  lips  and  made  her  drink,  Elsie's  eyes  followed 
every  motion  gratefully. 

"Who  are  you?"  she  cried,  clutching  her  new  friend's 
plump  soft  hand  eagerly.  "Tell  me  where  I  am.  Who 
brought  me  here?  How  did  I  get  here?" 

"I'm  Edie  Relf,"  the  girl  answered  in  the  same  low  sil- 
very voice  as  before,  stooping  down  and  kissing  her. 
"You  know  my  brother,  Warren  Relf,  the  artist  whom 
you  met  at  Whitestrand.  You've  had  an  accident — you 
fell  into  the  water — from  the  shore  at  \Vhitestrand.  And 
Warren,  who  was  cruising  about  in  his  yawl,  picked  you 
up  and  brought  you  ashore  here.  You're  at  Lowestoft 
now.  Mamma  and  I  are  here  in  lodgings.  Nobody  at 
Whitestrand  knows  anything  about  it  yet,  we  believe. — 
But,  darling,"  and  she  held  poor  Elsie's  hand  tight  at  this, 
and  whispered  very  low  and  close  in  her  ear,  "we  think 
we  guess  all  the  rest  too.  We  think  we  know  how  it  all 
happened. — Don't  be  afraid  of  us.  You  may  tell  it  all 
to  us  by-and-by,  when  you're  quite  strong  enough.  Moth- 
er and  I  will  do  all  we  can  to  make  you  better.  \Ve  know 
we  can  never  make  you  forget  it." 

Elsie's  head  sank  back  on  the  pillow.  It  was  all  terri- 
ble— terrible — terrible.  But  one  thought  possessed  her 
whole  nature  now.  Hugh  must  think  she  was  really 
drowned:  that  would  grieve  Hugh — dear  affectionate 
Hugh. — He  might  be  cruel  enough  to  cast  her  off  as  he 
had  done — though  she  couldn't  believe  it — it  must  surely 
be  a  hideous,  hideous  dream,  from  which  sooner  or  later 
she  would  be  certain  to  have  a  happy  awakening — but  at 
any  rate  it  must  have  driven  him  wild  with  grief  and  re- 
morse and  horror  to  think  he  had  killed  her— to  think 
she  was  lost  to  him. — Oughtn't  she  to  telegraph  at  once 
to  Hugh — to  dear,  dear  Hugh— and  tell  him  at  least  she 
was  saved,  she  was  still  living? 


THE  PLAN  EXTENDS  ITSELF.  133 

CHAPTER  XV. 

THE  PLAN  EXTENDS  ITSELF. 

For  three  or  four  days  Elsie  lay  at  the  Relfs'  lodgings  at 
Lowestoft,  seriously  ill,  but  slowly  improving;  and  all 
the -time,  Mrs.  Relf  and  Edie  watched  over  her  tenderly 
with  unceasing  solicitude,  as  though  she  had  been  their 
own  daughter  and  sister.  Elsie's  heart  was  torn  every 
moment  by  a  devouring  desire  to  know  what  Hugh  had 
done,  what  Hugh  was  doing,  what  they  had  all  said  and 
thought  about  her  at  Whitestrand.  She  never  said  so 
directly  to  the  Relfs,  of  course ;  she  couldn't  bring  herself 
yet  to  speak  of  it  to  anybody;  but  Edie  perceived  it  in- 
tuitively from  her  silence  and  her  words;  and  after  a  time, 
she  mentioned  the  matter  in  sisterly  confidence  to  her 
brother  Warren.  They  had  both  looked  in  the  local 
papers  for  some  account  of  the  accident — if  accident  it 
were — and  saw,  to  their  surprise,  that  no  note  was  taken 
anywhere  of  Elsie's  sudden  disappearance. 

This  was  curious,  not  to  say  ominous;  for  in  most 
English  country  villages  a  young  lady  cannot  vanish  into 
space  on  a  summer  evening,  especially  by  flinging  herself 
bodily  into  the  sea — as  Warren  Relf  did  not  doubt  for  a 
second  Elsie  had  done  in  the  momentary  desperation  of 
a  terrible  awakening — without  exciting  some  sort  of  local 
curiosity  as  to  where  she  has  gone  or  what  has  become 
of  the  body.  We  cannot  emulate  the  calm  social  atmos- 
phere of  the  Bagdad  of  the  Califs,  where  a  mysterious  dis- 
appearance on  an  enchanted  carpet  aroused  but  the  faintest 
and  most  languid  passing  interest  in  the  breasts  of  the 
bystanders.  With  us,  the  enchanted  carpet  explanation 
has  fallen  out  of  date,  and  mysterious  disappearances,  how- 
ever remarkable,  form  a  subject  rather  of  prosaic  and  pry- 
ing inquiry  on  the  part  of  those  commonplace  and  unro- 
mantic  myrmidons,  the  county  constabulary. 

So  the  strange  absence  of  any  allusion  in  the  White- 
strand  news  to  what  must  needs  have  formed  a  nine  days' 
wonder  in  the  quiet  little  village,  quickened  all  Warren 
Relfs  profoundest  suspicions  as  to  Hugh's  procedure. 


134  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

At  Whitestrand,  all  they  could  possibly  know  was  that 
Miss  Challoner  was  missing — perhaps  even  that  Miss 
Challoner  had  drowned  herself.  Why  should  it  all  be  so 
unaccountably  burked,  so  strangely  hushed  up  in  the 
local  newspapers?  Why  should  no  report  be  divulged 
anywhere?  Why  should  nobody  even  hint  in  the  "Lowes- 
toft  Times"  or  the  "Ipswich  Chronicle"  that  a  young  lady, 
of  considerable  personal  attractions,  was  unaccountably 
missing  from  the  family  of  a  well-known  Suffolk  land- 
owner? 

Already  on  the  very  day  after  his  return  to  Lowestoft, 
W^arren  Relf  had  hastily  telegraphed  to  Hugh  Massinger 
at  Whitestrand  that  he  was  detained  in  the  Broads,  and 
would  be  unable  to  carry  out  his  long-standing  engage- 
ment to  take  him  round  in  the  "Mud-Turtle"  to  London. 
But  as  time  went  on,  and  no  news  came  from  Massinger, 
Warren  Relf's  suspicions  deepened  daily.  It  was  clear 
that  Elsie,  too,  was  lingering  in  her  convalescence  from 
suspense  and  uncertainty.  She  couldn't  make  up  her  mind 
to  write  either  to  Hugh  or  Winifred,  and  yet  she  couldn't 
bear  the  long  state  of  doubt  which  silence  entailed  upon 
her.  So  at  last,  to  set  to  rest  their  joint  fears,  and  to  make 
sure  what  was  really  being  said  and  done  and  thought  at 
Whitestrand,  Warren  Relf  determined  to  run  over  quietly 
for  an  afternoon's  inquiry,  and  to  hear  with  his  own  ears 
how  people  were  talking  about  the  topic  of  the  hour  in 
the  little  village. 

He  never  got  there,  however.  At  Almundham  Station, 
to  his  great  surprise,  he  ran  suddenly  against  Mr.  Wyville 
Meysey.  The  Squire  recognized  him  at  a  glance  as  the 
young  man  who  had  taken  them  in  his  yawl  to  the  sand- 
hills, and  began  to  talk  to  him  freely  at  once  about  all 
that  had  since  happened  in  the  family.  But  Relf  was 
even  more  astonished  when  he  found'  that  the  subject 
which  lay  uppermost  in  Mr.  Meysey's  mind  just  then  was 
not  Elsie  Challoner's  mysterious  disappearance  at  all, 
but  his  daughter  Winifred's  recent  engagement  to  Hugh 
Massinger.  The  painter  was  still  some  years  too  young 
to  have  mastered  the  profound  anthropological  truth  that, 
even  with  the  best  of  us,  man  is  always  a  self-centered 
being. 


THE  PLAN  EXTENDS  ITSELF.  135 

"Well,  yes,"  the  Squire  said,  after  a  few  commonplaces 
of  conversation  had  been  interchanged  between  them. 
''You  .haven't  heard,  then,  from  your  friend  Massinger 
lately,  haven't  you?  I'm  surprised  at  that.  He  had  some- 
thing out  of  the  common  to  communicate.  I  should  have 
thought  he'd  have  been  anxious  to  let  you  know  at  once 
that  he  and  my  girl  Winifred  had  hit  things  off  amicably 
together. — Oh  yes,  it's  announced,  definitely  announced: 
Society  is  aware  of  it.  Mrs.  Meysey  made  it  known  to 
the  county,  so  to  speak,  at  Sir  Theodore  Sheepshanks' 
on  Wednesday  evening.  Your  friend  Massinger  is  not 
perhaps  quite  the  precise  man  we  might  have  selected 
ourselves  for  Winifred,  if  we'd  taken  the  choice  into  our 
own  hands:  but  what  I  say  is,  let  the  young  people  settle 
these  things  themselves — let  the  young  people  settle  them 
between  them.  It's  they  who've  got  to  live  with  one 
another,  after  all,  not  we;  and  they're  a  great  deal  more 
interested  in  it  at  bottom,  when  one  comes  to  think  of  it, 
than  the  whole  of  the  rest  of  us  put  together." 

"And  Miss  Challoner?"  Warren  asked,  as  soon  as  he 
could  edge  in  a  word  conveniently,  after  the  Squire  had 
dealt  from  many  points  of  view — all  equally  prosy — with 
Hugh  Massinger's  position,  character,  and  prospects — "is 
she  still  with  you?  I'm  greatly  interested  in  her.  She 
made  an  immense  impression  on  me  that  dav  in  the  sand- 
hills." 

The  Squire's  face  fell  somewhat.  "Miss  Challoner?" 
he  echoed.  "Ah,  yes;  our  governess.  Well,  to  tell  you 
the  truth — if  you  ask  me  point-blank — Miss  Challoner's 
gone  off  a  little  suddenly. — We've  been  disappointed  in 
that  girl,  if  you  will  have  it.  We  don't  want  it  talked 
about  in  the  neighborhood  more  than  we  can  help,  on 
Hugh  Massinger's  account,  more  than  anything  else,  be- 
cause, after  all,  she  was  a  sort  of  a  cousin  of  his — a  sort 
of  a  cousin,  though  a  very  remote  one;  as  we  learn  now, 
an  extremely  remote  one.  We've  asked  the  servants  to 
hush  it  all  up  as  much  as  they  can,  to  prevent  gossip ;  for 
my  daughter's  sake,  we'd  like  to  avoid  gossip ;  but  I  don't 
mind  telling  you,  in  strict  confidence,  as  you're  a  friend 
of  Massinger's,  that  Miss  Challoner  left  us,  we  all  think, 
in  a  most  unkind  and  ungrateful  manner.  It  fell  upon 


136  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

us  like  a  thunderbolt  from  a  clear  sky.  She  wrote  a  letter 
to  Winifred  the  day  before  to  say  she  was  leaving  for 
parts  unknown,  without  grounds  stated.  She  -slipped 
away,  like  a  thief  in  the  night,  as  the  proverb  says,  taking 
just  a  small  handbag  with  her,  one  dark  evening;  _and 
the  only  other  communication  we've  since  received 
is  a  telegram  from  London — sent  to  Hugh  Massinger — 
asking  us,  in  the  most  mysterious,  romantic  school-girlish 
style,  to  forward  her  luggage  and  belongings  to  an  ad- 
dress given." 

"A  telegram  from  London!"  Warren  Relf  cried  in  blank 
surprise.  "Do  you  think  Miss  Challoner's  in  London, 
then?  That's  very  remarkable. — A  telegram  to  Mas- 
singer!  asking  you  to  send  her  luggage  on  to  London! — 
You're  quite  sure  it  came  from  London,  are  you?" 

"Quite  sure! — Why,  I've  got  it  in  my  pocket  this  very 
moment,  my  dear  sir,"  the  Squire  replied  somewhat  test- 
ily. (WThen  an  elder  man  says  "My  dear  sir"  to  a  very 
much  younger  one,  you  may  take  it  for  granted  he  always 
means  to  mark  his  strong  disapprobation  of  the  particular 
turn  the  talk  has  taken.)  "Here  it  is — look:  To  Hugh 
Massinger,  Fisherman's  Rest,  \Vhitestrand,  Suffolk. — Ask 
Winifred  to  send  the  rest  of  my  luggage  and  property  to 
27,  Holmbury  Place,  Duke  Street,  St.  James'.  Expla- 
nations by  post  hereafter. — Elsie  Challoner.' — And  here's 
the  letter  she  wrote  to  Winifred:  a  very  disappointing, 
disheartening  letter.  .I'd  like  you  to  read  it,  as  you  seem 
interested  in  the  girl.  It's  an  immense  mistake  ever  to  be 
interested  in  anybody  anywhere!  A  very  bad  lot,  after 
all,  I'm  afraid;  though  she's  clever,  of  course,  undeniably 
clever. — We  had  her  with  the  best  credentials,  too,  from 
Girton.  We're  only  too  thankful  now  to  think  she  should 
have  associated  for  so  very  short  a  time  with  my  daughter 
Winifred." 

Warren  Relf  took  the  letter  and  telegram  from  the 
Squire's  hand  in  speechless  astonishment.  This  was  evi- 
dently a  plot — a  dark  and  extraordinary  plot  of  Mas- 
singer's.  Just  at  first  he  could  hardly  unravel  its  curious 
intricacies.  He  knew  the  address  in  Holmbury  Place 
well;  it  was  where  the  club  porter  of  the  Cheyne  Row 
lived.  But  he  read  the  letter  with  utter  bewilderment. 


THE  PLAN  EXTENDS  ITSELF.  137 

Then  the  whole  truth  dawned  piecemeal  upon  his  aston- 
ished mind  as  he  read  it  over  and  over  slowly.  It  was 
all  a  lie — a  hideous,  hateful  lie.  Hugh  Massinger  believed 
that  Elsie  was  drowned.  He  had  forged  the  letter  to 
Winifred  to  cover  the  truth,  and,  incredible  as  it  seemed 
to  a  straightforward,  honest  nature  like  Warren  Relf's,  he 
had  managed  to  get  the  telegram  sent  from  London  by 
some  other  person,  in  Elsie's  name,  and  to  have  Elsie's 
belongings  forwarded  direct  to  the  club  porter's,  as  if  at 
her  own  request,  by  Miss  Meysey.  Warren  Relf  stood 
aghast  with  horror  at  this  unexpected  revelation  of  Mas- 
singer's  utter  baseness  and  extraordinary  cunning.  He 
had  suspected  the  man  of  heartlessness  and  levity;  he 
had  never  suspected  him  of  anything  like  so  profound  a 
capacity  for  serious  crime — for  forgery  and  theft  and  con- 
cealment of  evidence. 

His  fingers  trembled  as  he  held  and  examined  the  two 
documents.  At  all  hazards,  he  must  show  them  to  Miss 
Challoner.  It  was  right  she  should  know  herself  for 
exactly  what  manner  of  man  she  had  thrown  herself  away. 
He  hesitated  a  moment,  then  he  said  boldly:  "These 
papers  are  very  important  to  me,  as  casting  light  on  the 
whole  matter.  I'm  an  acquaintance  of  Massinger's,  and 
I'm  deeply  interested  in  the  young  lady.  It's  highly  de- 
sirable she  should  be  traced  and  looked  after.  I  have 
some  reason  to  suspect  where  she  is  at  present  I  want 
to  ask  a  favor  of  you  now.  Will  you  lend  me  these  docu- 
ments, for  three  days  only,  and  will  you  kindly  mention  to 
nobody  at  present  the  fact  of  your  having  seen  me  or 
spoken  to  me  here  this  morning?"  To  gain  time  at  least 
was  always  something. 

The  Squire  was  somewhat  taken  aback  at  first  by  this 
unexpected  request;  but  Warren  Relf  looked  so  honest 
and  true  as  he  asked  it,  that,  after  a  few  words  of  hesita- 
tion and  explanation,  the  Squire,  convinced  of  his  friendly 
intentions,  acceded  to  both  his  propositions  at  once.  It 
flashed  across  his  mind  as  a  possible  solution  that  the 
painter  had  been  pestering  Elsie  with  too-pressing  atten- 
tions, and  that  Elsie,  with  hysterical  girlish  haste,  had 
run  away  from  him  to  escape  them — or  perhaps  only  to 
make  him  follow  her.  Anyhow,  there  would  be  no  great 


138  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

harm  in  his  tracking  her  down.  "If  the  girl's  in  trouble, 
and  you  think  you  can  help  her,"  he  said  good-naturedly, 
"I  don't  mind  giving  you  what  assistance  I  can  in  this 
matter.  You  can  have  the  papers.  Send  them  back  next 
week  or  the  week  after.  I'm  going  to  Scotland  for  a 
fortnight's  shooting  now — at  Farquharson's  of  Invertanar 
— and  I  shan't  be  back  till  the  loth  or  i  ith.  But  I'm  glad 
somebody  has  some  idea  where  the  girl  is.  As  it  seems 
to  be  confidential,  I'll  ask  no  questions  at  present  about 
her;  but  I  do  hope  she  hasn't  got  into  any  serious  mis- 
chief." 

"She  has  got  into  no  mischief  at  all  of  any  sort,"  War- 
ren Relf  answered  slowly  and  seriously.  "You  are  evi- 
dently laboring  under  a  complete  misapprehension,  Mr. 
Meysey,  as  to  her  reasons  for  leaving  you.  I  have  no 
doubt  that  misapprehension  will  be  cleared  up  in  time. 
Miss  Challoner's  motives,  I  can  assure  you,  were  perfectly 
right  and  proper;  only  the  action  of  another  person  has 
led  you  to  mistake  her  conduct  in  the  matter." 

This  was  mysterious,  and  the  Squire  hated  mystery; 
but  after  all,  it  favored  his  theory — and  besides,  the  matter 
was  to  him  a  relatively  unimportant  one.  It  didn't  concern 
his  own  private  interest.  He  merely  suspected  Warren 
Relf  of  having  got  himself  mixed  up  in  some  foolish  love 
affair  with  Elsie  Challoner,  his  daughter's  governess,  and 
he  vaguely  conceived  that  one  or  other  of  them  had  taken 
a  very  remarkable  and  romantic  way  of  wriggling  out  of 
it.  Moreover,  at  that  precise  moment  his  train  came  in; 
and  since  time  and  train  wait  for  no  man,  the  Squire,  with 
a  hasty  farewell  to  the  young  painter,  installed  himself 
forthwith  on  the  comfortable  cushions  of  a  first-class  car- 
riage, and  steamed  unconcernedly  out  of  Almundham 
Station. 

It  was  useless  for  Warren  Relf  now  to  go  on  to  White- 
strand.  To  show  himself  there  would  be  merely  to  display 
his  hand  openly  before  Hugh  Massinger.  The  caprice 
of  circumstances  had  settled  everything  for  him  exactly  as 
he  would  have  wished  it.  It  was  lucky  indeed  that' the 
Squire  would  be  away  for  a  whole  fortnight;  his  absence 
would  give  them  time  to  concert  a  connected  plan  of  ac- 
tion, and  to  devise  means  for  protecting  Elsie.  For  to 


FROM    INFORMATION   RECEIVED.  139 

Warren  Relf  that  was  now  the  one  great  problem  in  the 
case — how  to  hush  the  whole  matter  up,  without  expos- 
ing Elsie's  wounded  heart  to  daws  and  jays — without 
making  her  the  matter  of  unnecessary  suspicion,  or  the 
subject  of  common  gossip  and  censorious  chatter.  At 
all  costs,  it  must  never  be  said  that  Miss  Challoner  had 
tried  to  drown  herself  in  spite  and  jealousy  at  Whitestrand 
poplar,  because  Hugh  Massinger  had  ventured  to  propose 
to  Winifred  Meysey. 

That  was  how  the  daws  and  jays  would  put  it,  after 
their  odious  kind,  over  the  five  o'clock  tea,  in  their  demure 
drawing-rooms. 

What  Elsie  herself  would  say  to  it  all,  or  think  of  doing 
in  these  difficult  circumstances,  Warren  Relf  did  not  in  the 
least  know.  As  yet,  he  was  only  very  imperfectly  in- 
formed as  to  the  real  state  of  the  case  in  all  its  minor 
details.  But  he  knew  this  much — that  he  must  screen 
Elsie  at  all  hazards  from  the  slanderous  tongues  of  five 
o'clock  tea-tables,  and  that  the  story  must  be  kept  as 
quiet  as  possible,  safeguarded  by  himself,  his  mother,  and 
his  sister. 

So  he  took  the  next  train  back  to  Lowestoft,  to  consult 
at  leisure  on  these  new  proofs  of  Hugh  Massinger's  guilt 
with  his  domestic  counselors. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 
FROM  INFORMATION  RECEIVED. 

At  Whitestrand  itself,  that  same  afternoon,  Hugh  Mas- 
singer  sat  in  his  own  little  parlor  at  the  village  inn,  feverish 
and  eager,  as  he  had  always  been  since  that  terrible  night 
when  "Elsie  was  drowned,"  as  he  firmly  believed  without 
doubt  or  question;  and  in  the  bar  across  the  passage, 
a  couple  of  new-comers,  rough  waterside  characters, 
were  talking  loudly  in  the  seafaring  tongue  about  some 
matter  of  their  own  over  a  pint  of  beer  and  a  pipe  of 
tobacco.  Hugh  tried  in  vain  for  many  minutes  to  inter- 
est himself  in  the  concluding  verses  of  his  "Death  of 
Alaric" — anything  for  an  escape  from  this  gnawing  re- 


140  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

morse — but  his  Hippocrene  was  dry,  his  Pegasus  refused 
to  budge  a  feather:  he  could  find  no  rhymes  and  grind 
out  no  sentiments;  till,  angry  with  himself  at  last  for  his 
own  unproductiveness,  he  leaned  back  in  his  chair  with 
profound  annoyance  and  listened  listlessly  to  the  strange 
disjointed  echoes  of  gossip  that  came  to  him  in  fragments 
through  the  half-open  door  from  the  adjoining  taproom. 
To  his  immense  surprise,  the  talk  was  not  now  of  top- 
sails or  of  spinnakers :  conversation  seemed  to  have  taken 
a  literary  turn;  he  caught  more  than  once  through  the 
haze  of  words  the  unexpected  names  of  Charles  Dickens 
and  Rogue  Riderhood. 

The  oddity  of  their  occurrence  in  such  company  made 
him  prick  up  his  ears.  He  strained  his  hearing  to  catch 
the  context. 

"Yis,"  the  voice  was  drawling  out,  in  very  pure  Suffolk, 
just  tinged  with  the  more  metropolitan  Wapping  accent; 
"I  read  that  there  book,  'Our  Mutual  Friend/  I  think 
he  call  it.  A  mate  o'  mine,  he  say  to  me  one  day,  'Bill,' 
he  say,  'he  ha'  bin  a-takin'  yow  off,  bor.  He  ha'  showed 
yow  up  in  print,  under  the  naame  o'  Roogue  Ridenhood,' 
he  say,  'and  yow  owt  to  read  it,  if  oonly  for  the  likeness. 
Blow  me  if  he  heen't  got  yow  what  ye  call  proper.' 
'Yow  don't  mean  that?'  I  say,  'cos  I  thowt  he  was  a- 
jookin',  ye  know.  'I  dew,  though,'  he  answer;  'and  yow 
must  look  into  it.'  Well,  I  got  howd  o'  the  book,  an'  I 
read  it  right  throu';  leastways,  my  missus,  she  read  it 
out  loud  to  me;  she  ha'  got  more  larnin'  than  me,  ye 
know;  and  the  whool  lot  is  what  I  call  a  bargain  o'  squit. 
It's  noo  more  like  me  than  chalk's  like  cheese." 

"The  cap  doon't  fare  to  fit  yow,  then,"  the  other  voice 
retorted,  with  a  gurgle  of  tobacco.  "He  heen't  drew  yow 
soo  any  one  would  know  who  it  is?" 

"Know  me?  I  should  think  not.  What  he  say  's  a 
parcel  of  rubbidge.  This  here  Roogue  Ridenhood,  ac- 
cordin'  to  the  tale,  ye  see,  he  used  to  row  about  Limehouse 
Reach,  a-searchin'  for  bodies." 

"Searchin'  for  bodies!"  the  second  man  repeated,  with 
an  incredulous  whiff.  "Why,  what,  the  deuce  and  turfy 
did  he  want  to  do  that  for?" 

"Well,  that's  jest  where  it  is,  doon't  ye  see?     He  done 


FROM  INFORMATION  RECEIVED.  141 

it  for  a  livin'.  'For  a  livin',  I  say,  when  my  missus  up  an' 
read  that  part  out  to  me ;  'why,  what  manner  o'  livin'  could 
a  poor  beggar  make  out  o'  that?'  I  say.  'It  een't  as 
though  a  body  was  wuth  anything  nowadays,  as  a  body/ 
I  say,  argifyin'  like.  'A  man  what  knew  anything  about 
the  riverside  wouldn't  a  wroot  such  rubbidge  as  that,  an' 
put  it  into  a  printed  book,  what  ought  to  be  ackerate.  My 
belief  is,'  I  say,  'that  that  there  Dickens  is  an  ©overrated 
man.  In  fact,  the  man's  a  fule.  A  body  nowadays, 
whether  it  be  a  drownded  body  or  a  nat'ral  one,  een't  wuth 
nothin',  not  the  clothes  it  stand  upright  in,  as  a  body,'  I 
put  it.  Times  goon  by,'  I  say  to  har,  'a  body  was  actshally 
a  body,  an'  wuth  savin'  for  itself,  afore  body-snatchin'  was 
done  away  wooth  by  that  there  'Xatamony  Act.  But 
what  is  it  now?  Wuth  half  a  crown  for  landin'  it,  paid 
by  the  parish,  if  it's  landed  in  Essex,  or  five  bob  if  yow 
tow  it  cover  Surrey  side  of  river.  Not  but  what  I  grant 
yow  there's  bodies  an'  bodies.  If  a  nob  drownd  hisself, 
why  then,  in  course,  there's  sometimes  as  much  as  fifty 
pound,  or  maybe  a  hundred,  set  on  the  body.  His  friends 
are  glad  to  get  the  corpse  back,  an'  prove  his  death,  an' 
hev  it  buried  reglar  in  the  family  churchyard.  Saves  a 
deal  in  lawyer's  expenses,  that  do.  I  doon't  deny  but 
what  they  offer  free  enough  for  a  nob.  But  how  many 
nobs  goo  and  drownd  theirselves  in  a  season,  do  yow 
suppose?  And  wrho  that  knew  anything  about  the  river 
would  goo  a-lookin'  for  nobs  in  Limehouse  Reach  or 
down  about  Bermondsey  way?'" 

"It  stand  to  reason  they  woon't,  Bill,"  the  other  voice 
answered  with  a  quiet  chuckle. 

"In  course  it  stand  to  reason,"  Bill  replied  warmly  with 
an  emphatic  expletive.  "When  a  nob  drownd  hisself,  he 
doon't  hull  hisself  off  London  Bridge ;  no,  nor  off  Black- 
friars  nather,  I  warrant  ye.  He  doon't  put  hisself  out 
aforehand  for  nothin'  like  that,  takin'  a  'bus  into  the  city 
out  o'  pure  fulishness.  He  jest  clap  his  hat  on  his  hid 
an'  stroll  down  to  Westminster  Bridge,  or  to  Charen 
Cross  or  Waterloo — a  lot  on  'em  goo  cover  Waterloo, 
pleece  or  no  pleece ;  an'  he  jump  in  cloose  an'  handy  to  his 
own  door,  in  a  way  of  speakin',  and  a  done  wooth  it.  But 
what's  the  use  of  lookin'  for  him  arter  that  below  bridge, 


142  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

down  Limehouse  way?  Anybody  what  know  the  river 
know  well  enough  that  a  body  startin'  from  Waterloo,  or 
maybe  from  Westminster,  doon't  goo  down  to  Limehouse, 
ebb  or  flow,  nor  nothin'  like  it.  It  get  into  the  whirlpool 
off  Saunders'  wharf,  an'  ketch  the  back-current,  and  turn 
round  and  round  till  it's  flung  up  by  the  tide,  as  yow  may 
say,  upward,  on  the  mud  at  Milbank,  or  by  Lambeth 
Stangate.  Soo  there  een't  a  livin'  to  be  made  anyhow  by 
pickin'  up  bodies  down  about  Limehouse;  an'  it's  allus 
been  my  opinion  ever  since  then  that  that  there  Dickens  is 
a  very  much  ooverrated  pusson." 

"There  een't  the  least  doubt  about  that,"  the  other  an- 
swered. "If  he  said  soo,  yow  can't  be  far  wrong  there 
nather." 

To  Hugh  Massinger,  sitting  apart  in  his  own  room, 
these  strange  scraps  of  an  alien  conversation  had  just  then 
a  ghastly  and  horrible  fascination.  These  men  were  ac- 
customed, then,  to  drowned  corpses!  They  were  con- 
noisseurs in  drowning.  They  knew  the  ways  of  bodies 
like  regular  experts.  He  listened,  spellbound,  to  catch 
their  next  sentences.  There  was  a  short  pause,  during 
which — as  he  judged  by  the  way  they  breathed — each  took 
a  long  pull  at  the  pewter  mug,  and  then  the  last  speaker 
began  again.  "Yow  owt  to  know,"  he  murmured  mus- 
ingly, "for  I  s'pose  there  een't  any  man  on  the  river  any- 
where what  'a  had  to  do  wooth  as  many  bodies  as  yow 
hev!" 

"Yow're  right,  bor,"  the  first  person  assented  emphatic- 
ally. "Thutty  year  I  ha'  sarved  the  Trinity  House,  sun- 
shine or  rain,  an'  yow  doon't  pervision  lightships  that 
long  woothout  larnin'  a  thing  or  two  on  the  way  about 
corpsus.  The  current  carry  'em  all  one  way  round.  A 
body  what  start  on  its  jarney  at  Westminster,  as  it  may 
be  here,  goo  ashore  at  Milbank.  A  body  which  begin  at 
London  Bridge,  come  out,  as  reglar  as  clockwuck,  on  the 
fuddcr  ind  o'  the  Isle  o'  Dogs.— It's  jest  the  same  along 
this  here  east  coost.  I  picked  up  that  gal  I  ha'  come 
about  to-day  on  the  north  side  o'  the  Orfordness  Light, 
by  tfie  back  o'  the  Trinity  groin  or  cloose  by.  A  body 
which  come  up  on  the  north  side  of  Orfordness  has  allus 
drifted  down  from  the  nor'-west'ard.  Soo  it  stand  to 


FROM  INFORMATION  RECEIVED.  143 

reason  this  here  gal  I  ha'  got  layin'  up  there  in  the  dead- 
house  must  ha'  come  wooth  the  ebb  from  Walzerwig  or 
Aldeburgh  or  maybe  Whitestrand.  There  een't  another 
way  out  of  it  anyhow.  Well,  they  towd  me  at  Walzerwig 
there  was  a  young  lady  missin'  cover  here  at  Whitestrand 
— a  young  lady  from  the  Hall — a  nob,  niver  doubt:  an'  as 
there  might  be  money  in  it,  or  agin  there  mightn't,  why, 
in  course,  I  come  up  here  to  make  all  proper  inquiries." 

Hugh  Massinger's  heart  gave  a  terrible  bound.  Oh, 
heavens!  that  things  should  have  come  to  this  pass.  That 
wretch  had  found  Elsie's  body! 

In  what  a  tangled  maze  of  impossibilities  had  he  en- 
meshed himself  forever  by  that  one  false  step  of  the 
forged  letter.  This  wretch  had  found  Elsie's  body — 
the  body  that  he  loved  with  all  his  soul — and  he  could 
neither  claim  it  himself  nor  look  upon  it,  bury  it  nor  show 
the  faintest  interest  in  it,  without  involving  his  case  still 
further  in  endless  complications,  and  rousing  suspicions 
of  fatal  import  against  his  own  character. 

He  waited  breathlessly  for  the  next  sentence.  The  sec- 
ond speaker  went  on  once  more.  "And  it  doon't  fit?"  he 
suggested  inquiringly. 

"No,  it  doon't  fit,  drot  it,"  the  man  called  Bill  answered 
in  an  impatient  tone./'She  een't  drownded  at  all,  wuss 
luck,  the  young  lady  what's  missin'  from  the  Hall.  They 
ha'  had  letters  an'  talegraphs  from  har,  dated  later'n  the 
day  I  found  har.  I  ha'  handed  oover  the  body  to  the 
county  pleece;  it's  in  the  dead-house  at  the  Low  Light: 
an'  I  shan't  hev  noo  more  than  half  a  crown  from  the 
parish  arter  all  for  all  my  trouble.  Suffolk  an'  Essex  are 
half-a-crown  counties;  Surrey's  more  liberal;  it  goo  to 
five  bob  on  'em.  Why,  I'm  more'n  eight  shillin's  out  o' 
pocket  by  that  there  gal  a'ready,  what  wooth  loss  o'  time 
an'  travelin'  expenses  an'  soo  on.  Next  time  I  ketch  a 
body  knockin'  about  on  a  lee  shore,  wooth  the  tide  run- 
nin',  an'  the  breakers  poundin'  it  on  its  face  on  the  shingle, 
they  may  whistle  for  it  theirselves,  that's  what  they  may 
doo;  I  een't  a-gooin'  to  trouble  my  hid  about  it.  Make 
a  livin'  out  on  it,  indeed!  Why,  it's  all  rubbidge,  nothin' 
more  or  less.  It's  my  opinion  that  there  Dickens  is  a 
very  much  ooverrated  pusson." 


144  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

Hugh  Massinger  rose  slowly,  like  one  stunned,  walked 
across  the  room,  as  in  a  dream,  to  the  door,  closed  it  noise- 
lessly, for  he  could  contain  himself  no  longer,  and  then, 
burying  his  face  silently  in  his  arms,  cried  to  himself  a 
long  and  bitter  cry,  the  tears  following  one  another  hot  and 
fast  down  his  burning  cheeks,  while  his  throat  was  choked 
by  a  rising  ball  that  seemed  to  check  his  breath  and  impede 
the  utterance  of  his  stifled  sobs.  Elsie  was  dead,  dead  for 
him  as  if  he  had  actually  seen  her  drowned  body  cast  up, 
unknown,  as  the  man  so  hideously  and  graphically  de- 
scribed it  in  his  callous  brutality,  upon  the  long  spit  of 
the  Orfordness  lighthouse.  He  didn't  for  one  moment 
doubt  that  it  was  she  indeed  whom  the  fellow  had  found 
and  placed  in  the  mortuary.  His  own  lie  reacted  fatally 
against  himself.  He  had  put  others  on  a  false  track,  arid 
now  the  false  track  misled  his  own  spirit.  From  that  d;iy 
forth,  Elsie  was  indeed  dead,  dead,  dead  for  him.  Alive 
in  reality,  and  for  all  else  save  him,  she  was  dead  for  him 
as  though  he  had  seen  her  buried.  And  yet,  most  terrible 
irony  of  all,  he  must  still  pretend  before  all  the  world 
strenuously  and  ceaselessly  to  believe  her  living.  He 
must  never  in  a  single  forgetful  moment  display  his  grief 
and  remorse  for  the  past;  his  sorrow  for  the  loss  of  the 
one  woman  he  had  really  loved — and  basely  betrayed; 
his  profound  affection  for  her  now  she  was  gone  and  lost 
to  him  forever.  He  dare  not  even  inquire — for  the  pres- 
ent at  least — where  she  would  be  laid,  or  what  would  be 
done  with  her  poor  dishonored  and  neglected  corpse.  It 
must  be  buried,  unheeded,  in  a  pauper's  nameless  grave, 
by  creatures  as  base  and  cruel  as  the  one  who  had  discov- 
ered it  tossing  on  the  shore,  and  regarded  it  only  as  a  lucky 
find  to  make  half  a  crown  out  of.  Hugh's  inmost  soul 
was  revolted  at  the  thought.  And  yet — And  yet,  even  so, 
he  was  not  man  enough  to  go  boldly  down  to  Orfordness 
and  claim  and  rescue  that  sacred  corpse,  as  he  truly  and 
firmly  believed  it  to  be,  of  Elsie  Challoner's.  He  meant 
still  in  his  craven  soul  to  stand  well  with  the  world,  and 
to  crown  his  perfidy  by  marrying  Winifred. 


BREAKING  A  HEART.  145 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

BREAKING  A  HEART. 

When  Warren  Relf  returned  to  Lowestoft,  burning  with 
news  and  eager  at  his  luck,  his  first  act  was  to  call  his 
sister  Edie  hurriedly  out  of  Elsie's  room,  and  proceed  to 
a  consultation  with  her  upon  the  strange  evidence  he  had 
picked  up  so  unexpectedly  at  Almundham  Station. 
Should  they  show  it  to  Elsie,  or  should  they  keep  it  from 
her?  That  was  the  question.  Fortune  had  indeed  fa- 
vored the  brave ;  but  how  now  to  utilize  her  curious  infor- 
mation? Should  they  let  that  wronged  and  suffering  girl 
see  the  utter  abysses  of  human  baseness  yawning  in  the 
man  she  once  loved  and  trusted,  or  should  they  sedulously 
and  carefully  hide  it  all  from  her,  lest  they  break  the 
bruised  reed  with  their  ungentle  handling?  Warren  Relf 
himself,  after  thinking  it  over  in  his  own  soul — all  the  way 
back  to  Lowestoft  in  his  third-class  carriage — was  almost 
in  favor  now  of  the  specious  and  futile  policy  of  conceal- 
ment. Why  needlessly  harrow  the  poor  child's  feelings? 
Why  rake  up  the  embers  of  her  great  grief?  Surely  she 
had  been  wounded  and  lacerated  enough  already.  Let  her 
rest  content  with  what  she  knew  so  far  of  Massinger's 
cruel  and  treacherous  selfishness. 

But  Edie  met  this  plausible  reasoning,  after  a  true 
woman's  fashion,  with  an  emphatic  negative.  She  stood 
out  for  the  truth,  the  whole  truth,  and  nothing  but  the 
truth,  come  what  might  of  it. 

"Why?"  Warren  asked  with  a  relenting  eye. 

"Because,"  Edie  answered,  looking  up  at  him  reso- 
lutely, "it  would  be  better  she  should  get  it  all  over  at 
once.  It's  like  pulling  a  tooth — one  wrench,  and  be  done 
with  it!  What  a  pity  she  should  spend  her  whole  life 
long  in  mourning  and  wailing  over  this  wicked  man,  who 
isn't  and  never  was  in  any  way  worthy  of  her! — Warren, 
she's  a  dear,  sweet,  gentle  girl:  She  takes  my  heart.  I 
love  her  dearly  already. — She'll  mourn  and  wail  for  him 
enough  anyhow.  I  want  to  disenchant  her  as  much  as 


146  MIS  MOftf  AL  COIL. 

I  can  before  it's  too  late.  The  sooner  she  learns  to  hate 
and  despise  him  as  he  deserves,  the  better  for  everybody." 

"Why?"  Warren  asked  once  more,  with  a  curious  side- 
glance. 

"Because,"  Edie  went  on,  very  earnestly,  "she  may  some 
day  meet  some  other  better  man,  who  could  make  her  ten 
thousand  times  happier  as  his  wife,  than  this  wretched, 
sordid,  money-hunting  creature  could  ever  make  any  one. 
If  we  disenchant  her  at  once,  without  remorse,  it'll  help 
that  better  man's  case  forward  whenever  he  presents  him- 
self. If  not She  paused  significantly.  Their  eyes 

met;  Warren's  fell.  They  understood  one  another. 

"But  isn't  it  selfish?"  Warren  asked  wistfully. 

Edie  looked  up  at  him  with  a  profoundly  meaningless 
expression  on  her  soft  round  face.  "Selfish!"  she  cried, 
making  her  mouth  small.  "I  don't  understand  you. 
What  on  earth  has  selfishness  to  do  with  it  any  way? 
Nobody  spoke  about  any  particular  truer  and  better  man. 
You  jump  too  quick.  I  merely  laid  on  a  young  man  in 
the  abstract  From  the  point  of  view  of  a  young  man  in 
the  abstract,  I'm  sure  I'm  right,  absolutely  right.  I  al- 
ways am.  It's  a  way  I  have,  and  I  can't  help  it." 

"Besides  which,"  Warren  Relf  interposed  suddenly, 
"if  Massinger  really  did  write  that  forged  letter,  she'll  have 
to  arrange  something  about  it,  you  see,  sooner  or  later. 
She'll  want  to  set  herself  right  with  the  Meyseys,  of 
course,  and  she'll  probably  make  some  sort  of  represen- 
tation or  proposition  to  Massinger." 

"She'll  do  nothing  of  the  kind,  my  dear,"  Edie  an- 
swered promptly  with  brisk  .confidence. — "You're  a  goose, 
Warren,  and  you  don't  one  tiny  little  bit  understand  the  in- 
ferior creatures.  You  men  always  think  you  know  in- 
stinctively all  about  women,  and  can  read  us  through 
and  through  at  a  single  glance,  as  if  we  were  large  print 
on  a  street-poster;  while,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  you  never 
really  see  an  inch  deep  below  the  surface.— I'll  tell  you 
what  she'll  do,  you  great  blind  creature:  she'll  accept 
the  forgery  as  if  it  were  in  actual  fact  her  own  letter;  she'll 
never  write  a  word,  for  good  or  for  evil,  to  contradict  it 
or  confirm  it,  to  any  of  these  horrid  Whitestrand  people; 
shell  allow  this  hateful  wretch  Massinger  to  go  on  be- 


BREAKING  A  HEART.  147 

Having  she's  really  dead ;  and  she'll  cease  to  exist,  as  far 
as  he's  concerned,  in  a  passive  sort  of  way,  henceforth  and 
forever." 

"Will  she?"  Warren  Relf  asked  dubiously.  "How  on 
earth  do  you  know  what  she'll  do,  Edie?" 

"Why,  what  else  on  earth  could  she  do,  silly?"  his 
sister  answered,  with  the  same  perfect  conviction  in  her 
own  inbred  sagacity  and  perspicacity  as  ever.  "Could  she 
go  and  say  to  him,  with  tears  in  her  eyes  and  a  becoming 
smile  on  her  pretty  little  lips :  'My  own  heart's  darling,  I 
love  you  devotedly — and  I  know  you  signed  my  name  to 
that  forged  letter?'  Could  she  fling  herself  on  these  Mox- 
ies,  or  Mumpsies,  or  Mixies,  or  Meyseys,  or  whatever 
else  you  call  them,  and  say  sweetly:  'I  didn't  run  away  from 
you;  I  wasn't  in  earnest?  I  only  tried  ineffectually  to 
drown  myself,  for  love  of  this  dear,  sweet,  charming,  poet- 
ical cousin  of  mine,  who  disgracefully  jilted  me  in  order 
to  propose  to  your  own  daughter;  and  then,  believing 
me  to  have  killed  myself  for  shame  and  sorrow,  has 
trumped  up  letters  and  telegrams  in  my  name,  of  malice 
prepense,  on  purpose  to  deceive  you.  He's  a  mean  scoun- 
drel, and  I  hate  his  very  name;  and  I  want  him  for  myself; 
so  I  won't  allow  him  to  marry  your  Winifred,  or  wrhat- 
ever  else  her  precious  new-fangled  high-faluting  name  may 
be.'  Could  any  woman  on  earth  so  utterly  efface  herself 
and  her  own  womanliness  as  to  go  and  say  all  that,  do 
you  suppose,  to  anybody  anywhere? — You  may  think 
so  in  your  heart,  I  dare  say,  my  dear  boy;  but  you  won't 
get  a  solitary  woman  in  the  world  to  agree  with  you  on 
the  point  for  one  single  minute." 

The  painter  drew  his  hand  slowly  across  his  cold  brow. 
"I  suppose  you're  right,  Edie,"  he  answered,  bewildered. 
"But  what'll  she  do  with  herself,  then,  I  wonder?" 

"Do?"  Edie  echoed.  "As  if  do  were  the  word  for  it? 
Why,  do  nothing,  of  course — be;  suffer;  exist;  mourn 
over  it.  She'd  like,  if  she  could,  poor,  tender,  bruised, 
broken-hearted  thing,  to  creep  into  a  hole,  with  her  head 
hanging  down,  and  die  quietly,  like  a  wounded  creature, 
with  no  one  on  earth  to  worry  or  bother  her.  She  musn't 
die;  but  she  won't  do  anything.  All  we've  got  to  do 
ourselves  is  just  to  comfort  her:  to  be  silent  and  comfort 


148  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

her.  She'll  cease  to  live  now;  she'll  annihilate  herself; 
she'll  retire  from  life;  and  that  horrid  nian'll  think  she's 
dead;  and  that'll  be  all.  She'll  accept  the  situation.  She 
won't  expose  him;  she  loves  him  too  much  a  great  deal 
for  that.  She  won't  expose  herself;  she's  a  great  deal  too 
timid  and  shrinking  and  modest  for  that.  She'll  leave 
things  alone;  that's  all  she  can  do. — And  on  the  whole, 
my  dear,  if  you  only  knew,  it's  really  and  truly  the  best 
thing  possible." 

So  Edie  took  the  letter  and  telegram  pitifully  in  her 
hand,  and  went  with  what  boldness  she  could  muster 
up  into  Elsie's  bedroom.  Elsie  was  lying  on  the  sofa, 
propped  up  on  pillows,  in  the  white  dress  she  had  worn 
all  along,  and  with  her  face  and  hands  as  white  as  the 
dress  stuff;  and  as  Edie  held  the  incriminating  documents, 
part  hidden  in  her  gown,  to  keep  them  from  Elsie,  she 
felt  like  the  dentist  who  hides  behind  his  back  the  cruel 
wrenching  instrument  with  which  he  means  next  moment 
in  one  fierce  tug  to  drag  and  tear  your  very  nerves  out. 
She  stooped  down  and  kissed  Elsie  tenderly.  "Well, 
darling,"  she  said — for  illness  makes  women  wonderfully 
intimate — "Warren's  come  back. — Where  do  you  think 
he's  been? — He's  been  over  to-day  as  far  as  Almundham.'' 

"Almundham!"  Elsie  repeated,  with  a  cheek  more 
blanched  and  paler  than  ever.  "Why,  what  was  he  doing 
over  there  to-day,  dear?  Did  he  hear  anything  about — 

about Were  they  all  inquiring  after  me,  I  wonder? — 

\Vas  there  a  great  deal  of  talk  and  gossip  abroad? — Oh, 
Edie,  tell  me  quick  all  about  it!" 

"No,  darling,"  Edie  answered,  pressing  her  hand  tight, 
and  signing  to  her  mother,  who  sat  by  the  bed,  to  clasp 
the  other  one;  "nobody's  talking.  You  shall  not  be  dis- 
cussed. Warren  met  Mr.  Meysey  himself  at  the  Almund- 
ham Station;  and  Mr.  Meysey  was  going  to  Scotland; 
and  he  said  they'd  heard  from  you  twice  already,  to 
explain  it  all;  and  nobody  seemed  to  think  that— that 
anything  serious  in  any  way  had  happened." 

"Heard  from  me  twice!"  Elsie  cried,  puzzled.  "Heard 
from  me  twice — to  explain  it  all!  Why,  what  on  earth 
did  he  mean,  Edie?  There  must  be  some  strange  mistake 
somewhere." 


BREAKING  A  HEART.  149 

Edie  leant  over  her  with  tears  in  her  eyes.  It  was  a 
horrible  wrench,  but  come  it  must,  and  the  sooner  the 
better.  They  should  understand  where  they  stood  at 
once.  "No,  no  mistake,  darling,"  she  answered  distinctly. 
"Mr.  Meysey  gave  Warren  the  letter  to  read. — He's 
brought  it  back.  I've  got  it  here  for  you.  It's  in  your  own 
hand,  he  says. — Would  you  like  to  see  it  this  moment, 
darling?" 

Elsie's  cheek  showed  pale  as  death  now;  but  she  sum- 
moned up  courage  to  murmur  "Yes." 

It  seemed  the  mere  unearthly  ghost  of  &ycs,  so  hollow 
and  empty  was  it;  but  she  forced  it  out  somehow,  and 
took  the  letter.  Edie  watched  her  with  bent  brows  and 
trembling  lips.  How  would  she  take  it?  Would  she  see 
what  it  meant?  Would  she  know  who  wrote  it?  Could 
she  ever  believe  it? 

Elsie  gazed  at  it  in  dumb  astonishment.  So  admirable 
was  the  imitation,  that  for  a  moment's  space  she  actually 
thought  it  was  her  own  handwriting.  She  scanned  it 
close.  "My  darling  Winifred,"  it  began  as  usual,  and  in 
her  own  hand  too.  Why,  this  must  be  just  an  old  letter 
of  her  own  to  her  friend  and  pupil ;  what  possible  connec- 
tion could  Mr.  Meysey  or  Mr.  Relf  imagine  it  had  with 
the  present  crisis?  But  then  the  date — the  date  was  so 
curious:  "September  17" — that  fatal  evening!  She 
glanced  through  it  all  with  a  burning  eye.  Great  heavens, 
what  was  this?  "So  wicked,  so  ungrateful:  I  know  Mrs. 
Meysey  will  never  forgive  me." — "By  the  time  this  reaches 
you  I  shall  have  left  Whitestrand,  I  fear  forever."  "Dar- 
ling, for  heaven's  sake,  do  try  to  hush  this  up  as  much  as 
you  can." — "Ever  your  affectionate  but  broken-hearted 
Elsie." 

A  gasp  burst  from  her  bloodless  lips.  She  laid  it  down, 
with  both  hands  on  her  heart.  That  signature,  "Elsie," 
betrayed  the  whole  truth.  She  was  white  as  a  sheet  now, 
and  trembling  visibly  from  head  to  foot.  But  she  would 
go  right  through  with  it;  she  would  not  flinch;  she 
would  know  it  all — all — all,  utterly. 

"I  never  wrote  it,"  she  cried  to  Edie  with  a  choking 
voice. 

"I  know  you  didn't,  darling,"  Edie  whispered  in  her  ear. 


150  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

"And  you  know  who  did?''  Elsie  sobbed  out,  terrified. 

Edie  nodded.  "I  know  who  did — at  least,  I  suspect. — 
Cry,  darling,  cry.  Never  mind  us.  Don't  burst  your 
poor  heart  for  want  of  crying." 

But  Elsie  couldn't  cry  yet.  She  put  her  white  hand, 
trembling,  into  her  open  bosom,  and  pulled  out  slowly, 
with  long  lingering  reluctance — a  tiny  bundle  of  water- 
stained  letters.  They  were  Hugh's  letters,  that  she  had 
worn  at  her  breast  on  that  terrible  night.  She  had  dried 
them  all  carefully,  one  by  one  here  in  bed  at  Lowestoft; 
and  she  kept  them  still  next  the  broken  heart  that  Hugh 
had  so  lightly  sacrificed  to  Mammon.  Smudged  and 
half-erased  by  immersion  as  they  were,  she  could  still 
read  them  in  their  blurred  condition ;  and  she  knew  them 
by  heart  already,  for  the  matter  of  that,  if  the  water  had 
made  them  quite  illegible. 

She  drew  the  last  one  out  of  its  envelope  with  reverent 
care,  and  laid  it  down  side  by  side  with  the  forged  letter 
to  Winifred.  Paper  for  paper,  they  answered  exactly,  in 
size  and  shape  and  glaze  and  quality.  Hugh  had  often 
shown  her  how  admirably  he  could  imitate  any  particular 
handwriting.  The  suspicion  was  profound;  but  she 
would  give  him  at  least  the  full  benefit  of  all  possible 
doubts.  She  held  it  up  to  the  light  and  examined  the 
watermark.  Both  were  identical — an  unusual  paper; 
bought  at  a  fantastic  stationer's  in  Brighton.  It  was  driv- 
ing daggers  into  her  own  heart;  but  she  would  go  right 
through  with  it:  she  must  know  the  truth.  She  gave  a 
great  gasp,  and  then  took  three  other  letters  singly  from 
the  packet.  Horror  and  dismay  were  awakening  within 
her  the  instincts  and  ideas  of  an  experienced  detective. 
They  were  the  three  previous  letters  she  had  last  received 
from  Hugh,  in  regular  order.  A  stain  caused  by  a  drop 
of  milk  or  grease,  as  often  happens,  ran  right  through  the 
entire  quire.  It  was  biggest  on  the  front  page  of  the 
earliest  letter,  and  smallest  and  dimmest  on  its  back  fly- 
leaf. It  went  on.  decreasing  gradually  by  proportionate 
gradations  through  the  other  three.  'She  looked  at  the 
letter  to  Winifred  with  tearless  eyes.  It  corresponded 
exactly  in  every  respect;  for  it  had  been  the  fifth  and  mid- 
dle sheet  of  the  original  series, 


BREAKING  A  HEART.  151 

Elsie  laid  them  all  down  on  the  sofa  by  her  side  with 
an  exhausted  air  and  turned  wearily  to  Edie.  Her  face 
was  flushed  and  feverish  at  last.  She  said  nothing,  but 
leaned  back  with  a  ghastly  sob  on  her  pillow.  She  knew 
to  a  certainty  now  it  was  Hugh  who  had  done  this  name- 
less thing — Hugh  who  had  done  it,  believing  her,  his 
lever,  to  be  drowned  and  dead — Hugh  who  had  done  it 
at  the  very  moment  when,  as  he  himself  supposed,  her 
lifeless  body  was  tossing  and  dancing  among  the  mad 
breakers,  that  roared  and  shivered  with  unholy  joy  over 
the  hoarse  sandbanks  of  the  bar  at  Whitestrand.  It  was 
past  belief — but  it  was  Hugh  who  had  done  it. 

She  could  have  forgiven  him  almost  anything  else  save 
that;  but  that,  never,  ten  thousand  times  never!  She 
could  have  forgiven  him  even  his  cold  and  cruel  speech 
that  last  night  by  the  river  near  the  poplar:  "I  have  never 
been  engaged  to  you.  I  owe  you  nothing.  And  now  I 
mean  to  marry  Winifred."  She  could  have  forgiven  him 
all,  in  the  depth  of  her  despair. — She  could  have  loved 
him  still,  even — so  profound  is  the  power  of  first-love  in 
a  true  pure  woman's  inmost  nature — if  only  she  could 
have  believed  he  had  melted  and  repented  in  sackcloth 
and  ashes  for  his  sin  and  her  sorrow.  If  he  had  lost  his 
life  in  trying  to  save  her!  If  he  had  roused  the  county  to 
search  for  her  body!  Nay,  even  if  he  had  merely  gone 
home,  remorseful  and  self-reproaching,  and  had  pro- 
claimed the  truth  and  his  own  shame  in  an  agony  of  regret 
and  pity  and  bereavement. — For  her  own  sake,  she  was 
glad,  indeed,  he  had  not  done  all  this;  or  at  least  she 
would  perhaps  have  been  glad  if  she  had  had  the  heart 
to  think  of  herself  at  all  at  such  a  moment.  But  for  him — 
for  him — she  was  ashamed  and  horrified  and  stricken 
dumb  to  learn  it. 

For,  instead  of  all  this,  what  nameless  and  unspeakable 
thing  had  Hugh  Massinger  really  done?  Gone  home 
to  the  inn,  at  the  very  moment  when  she  lay  there  sense- 
less, the  prey  of  the  waves,  that  tossed  her  about  like  a 
plaything  on  their  cruel  crests — gone  home  to  the  inn, 
and  without  one  thought  of  her,  one  effort  to  rescue  her — 
for  how  could  she  think  otherwise? — full  only  of  vile  and 
craven  fears  for  his  own  safety,  sat  down  at  his  desk  and 


152  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

deliberately  forged  in  alien  handwriting  that  embodied 
Lie,  that  visible  and  tangible  documentary  Meanness,  that 
she  saw  staring  her  in  the  face  from  the  paper  before  her ! 
It  was  ghastly ;  it  was  incredible ;  it  was  past  conception ; 
but  it  was,  nevertheless,  the  simple  fact.  As  she  floated 
insensible  down  that  hideous  current,  for  the  sea  and  the 
river  to  fight  over  her  blanched  corpse,  the  man  she  had 
loved,  the  man  who  had  so  long  pretended  to  love  her, 
had  been  quietly  engaged  in  his  own  room  in  forging  her 
name  to  a  false  and  horrible  and  misleading  letter,  which 
might  cover  her  with  shame  in  the  unknown  grave  to 
which  his  own  cruelty  and  wickedness  and  callousness  had 
seemingly  consigned  her!  No  wonder  the  tears  stood 
back  unwillingly  from  her  burning  eyeballs.  For  grief 
and  horror  and  misery  like  hers,  no  relief  can  be  found  in 
mere  hysterical  weeping. 

And  who  had  done  this  heartless,  this  dastardly,  this 
impossible  thing?  Hugh  Massinger — her  cousin  Hugh — 
the  man  she  had  set  on  such  a  pinnacle  of  goodness  and 
praise  and  affection — the  man  she  had  worshiped  with 
her  whole  full  heart — the  man  she  had  accepted  as  the  very 
incarnation  of  all  that  was  truest  and  noblest  and  best  and 
most  beautiful  in  human  nature.  Her  idol  was  de- 
throned from  its  shrine  now;  and  in  the  empty  niche  from 
which  it  had  cast  itself  prone,  she  had  nothing  to  set  up 
instead  for  worship.  There  was  not,  and  there  never  had 
been,  a  Hugh.  The  universe  swam  like  a  frightful  blank 
around  her.  The  sun  had  darkened  itself  at  once  in  her 
sky.  The  solid  ground  seemed  to  fail  beneath  her  feet, 
and  she  felt  herself  suspended  alone  above  an  awful  abyss, 
a  seething  and  tossing  and  eddying  abyss  of  utter  chaos. 

Edie  Relf  held  her  hand  still;  while  the  sweet  gentle 
motherly  old  lady  with  the  snow-white  hair  and  the  tender 
eyes  put  a  cold  palm  up  against  her  burning  brow  to  help 
her  to  bear  it.  But  Elsie  was  hardly  aware  of  either  of 
them  now.  Her  head  swam  wildly  round  and  round  in  a 
horrible  phantasmagoria,  of  which  the  Hugh  that  was  not 
and  that  never  had  been  formed  the  central  pivot  and  main 
revolving  point;  while  the  Hugh  that  was  just  revealing 
himself  utterly  in  his  inmost  blackness  and  vileness  and 
nothingness  whirled  round  and  round  that  fixed  center 


BREAKING  A  HEART.  153 

ill  a  mad  career,  she  knew  not  how,  and  she  asked  not 
wherefore.  "Cry,  cry,  darling,  do  try  to  cry,"  both  the 
other  women  urged  upon  her  with  sobs  and  tears;  but 
Elsie's  eyeballs  were  hard  and  tearless,  and  her  heart 
siood  still  every  moment  within  her  with  unspeakable  awe 
a.ad  horror  and  incredulity. 

Presently  she  stretched  out  a  vague  hand  toward  Edie. 
"Give  me  the  telegram,  dear,"  she  said  in  a  cold  hard  voice, 
as  cold  and  hard  as  Hugh  Massinger's  own  on  that  fear- 
ful evening. 

Edie  handed  it  to  her  without  a  single  word. 

She  looked  at  it  mechanically,  her  lips  set  tight;  then 
she  asked  in  the  same  cold  metallic  tone  as  before:  "Do 
you  know  anything  of  27  Holmbury  Place,  Duke  Street, 
St.  James?" 

"Warren  says  the  club  porter  of  the  Cheyne  Row  lives 
there,"  Edie  answered  softly. 

Elsie  fell  back  upon  her  pillows  once  more.  "Edie," 
s.he  cried,  "oh,  Edie,  Edie,  hold  me  tight,  or  I  shall  sink 
and  die! — If  only  he  had  been  cruel  and  nothing  more,  I 
wouldn't  have  minded  it;  indeed,  I  wouldn't.  But  that 
he  should  be  so  cowardly,  so  mean,  so  unworthy  of  him- 
self— it  kills  me,  it  kills  me — I  couldn't  have  believed  it!" 

"Kiss  her,  mother,"  Edie  whispered  low.  "Kiss  her, 
and  lay  her  head,  so,  upon  your  dear  old  shoulder!  She's 
going  to  cry  now!  I  know  she's  going  to  cry!  Pat  her 
cheek :  yes,  so.  If  only  she  can  cry,  she  can  let  her  heart 
out,  and  it  won't  quite  kill  her." 

At  the  words,  Elsie  found  the  blessed  relief  of  tears; 
they  rose  to  her  eyes  in  a  torrent  flood.  She  cried  and 
cried  as  if  her  heart  would  burst.  But  it  eased  her  some- 
how. The  two  other  women  cried  in  sympathy,  holding 
her  hands,  and  encouraging  her  to  let  out  her  pent-up 
emotions  to  the  very  full  by  that  natural  outlet.  They 
cried  together  silently  for  many  minutes.  Then  Elsie 
pressed  their  two  hands  with  a  convulsive  grasp;  and 
they  knew  she  would  live,  and  that  the  shock  had  not 
entirely  killed  out  the  woman  within  her. 

An  hour  later,  when  Edie,  with  eyes  very  red  and 
swollen,  went  out  once  more  into  the  little  front  parlor 
to  fetch  some  needlework,  Warren  Relf  intercepted  her 


154  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

with  eager  questioning.  "How  is  she  now?"  he  asked  with 
an  anxious  face.  "Is  she  very  ill?  And  how  did  she  take 
it?" 

"She's  crying  her  eyes  out,  thank  heaven,"  Edie  answered 
fervently.  "And  it's'broken  her  heart.  It's  almost  killed 
her,  but  not  quite.  She's  crushed  and  lacerated  like  a 
wounded  creature." 

"But  what  will  she  do?"  Warren  asked,  with  a  wistful 
look. 

"Do?  Just  what  I  said.  Nothing  at  all.  Annihilate 
and  efface  herself.  She'll  accept  the  position,  leaving 
things  exactly  where  that  wretched  being  has  managed 
to  put  them;  and  so  far  as  he's  concerned,  she'll  drop 
altogether  out  of  existence." 

"How?" 

"She'll  go  with  mamma  and  me  to  San  Remo." 

"And  the  Meyseys?" 

"She'll  leave  them  to  form  her  own  conclusions. 
Henceforth,  she  prefers  to  be  simply  nobody." 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 
COMPLICATIONS. 

Elsie  spent  a  full  fortnight,  or  even  more,  at  Lowestoft; 
and  before  she  vacated  her  hospitable  quarters  in  the 
Relfs'  rooms,  it  was  quite  understood  between  them  all 
that  she  was  to  follow  out  the  simple  plan  of  action  so  has- 
tily sketched  by  Edie  to  Warren.  Elsie's  one  desire  now 
was  to  escape  observation.  Eyes  seemed  to  peer  at  her 
from  every  corner.  She  wanted  to  fly  forever  from  Hugh 
— from  that  Hugh  who  had  at  last  so  unconsciously  re- 
vealed to  her  the  inmost  depths  of  his  own  abject  and 
self-centered  nature;  and  she  wanted  to  be  saved  the  hid- 
eous necessity  for  explaining  to  others  what  only  the 
three  Relfs  at  present  knew — the  way  she  had  come  to 
leave  Whitestrand.  Hungering  for  sympathy,  as  women 
will  hunger  in  a  great  sorrow,  she  had  opened  to  Edie, 
bit  by  bit,  the  floodgates  of  her  grief,  and  told  piecemeal 
the  whole  of  her  painful  and  pitiable  story.  In  her  own 


COMPLICATIONS.  155 

mind,  Elsie  was  free  from  the  reproach  of  an  attempt  at 
self-murder;  and  Edie  and  Mrs.  Relf  accepted  in  good 
faith  the  poor  heart-broken  girl's  account  of  her  adventure ; 
but  she  could  never  hope  that  the  outer  world  could  be 
induced  to  believe  in  her  asserted  innocence.  She  dreaded 
the  nods  and  hints  and  suspicions  and  innuendoes  of  our 
bitter  society;  she  shrank  from  exposing  herself  to  its 
sneers  or  its  sympathy,  each  almost  equally  distasteful  to 
her  delicate  nature.  She  was  threatened  with  the  pillory 
of  a  newspaper  paragraph.  Hugh  Massinger's  lie  afforded 
her  now  an  easy  chance  of  escape.  She  accepted  it  willing- 
ly, without  afterthought.  All  she  wanted  in  her  trouble 
was  to  hide  her  poor  head  where  none  would  find  it;  and 
Edie  Relf's  plan  enabled  her  to  do  this  in  the  surest  and 
safest  possible  manner. 

Besides,  she  didn't  wish  to  make  Winifred  unhappy. 
Winifred  loved  her  cousin  Hugh.  She  saw  that  now; 
she  recognized  it  distinctly.  She  wondered  she  hadn't 
seen  it  plainly  long  before.  Winifred  had  often  been  so 
full  of  Hugh;  had  asked  so  many  questions,  had  seemed 
so  deeply  interested  in  all  that  concerned  him.  And  Hugh 
had  offered  his  heart  to  Winifred — be  the  same  more  or 
less,  he  had  at  least  offered  it.  Why  should  she  wish 
to  wreck  Winifred's  life,  as  that  cruel,  selfish,  ambitious 
man  had  wrecked  her  own?  She  couldn't  tell  the  whole 
truth  now  without  exposing  Hugh.  And  for  Winifred's 
sake  at  least  she  would  not  expose  him,  and  blight  Wini- 
fred's dream  at  the  very  moment  of  its  first  full  ecstacy. 

For  Winifred's  sake.  Nay,  rather  for  his  own.  For 
in  spite  of  everything,  she  still  loved  him.  She  could  never 
forgive  him,  but  she  still  loved  him.  Or  if  she  didn't  love 
the  Hugh  that  really  was,  she  loved  at  least  the  memory 
of  the  Hugh  that  was  not  and  that  never  had  been.  For 
his  dear  sake,  she  could  never  expose  that  other  base 
creature  that  bore  his  name  and  wore  his  features.  For 
her  own  love's  sake,  she  could  never  betray  him.  For 
her  womanly  consistency,  for  her  sense  of  identity,  she 
couldn't  turn  round  and  tell  the  truth  about  him.  To 
acquiesce  in  a  lie  was  wrong,  perhaps;  but  to  tell  the 
truth  would  have  been  more  than  human. 

"I  wish,"  she  cried  in  her  agony  to  Edie,  "I  could  go 


156  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

away  at  once  and  hide  myself  forever  in  America  or  Aus- 
tralia, or  somewhere  like  that — where  he  would  never 
know  I  was  really  living." 

Edie  stroked  her  smooth  black  hair  with  a  gentle  hand ; 
she  had  views  of  her  own  already,  had  Edie.  "It's  a  far 
cry  to  Loch  Awe,  darling,"  she  murmured  softly.  "Better 
come  with  mother  and  me  to  San  Remo." 

"San  Remo?"  Elsie  echoed.  "Why  San  Remo?" 
And  then  Edie  explained  to  her  in  brief  outlines  that  she 
and  her  mother  went  every  winter  to  the  Riviera,  taking 
with  them  a  few  delicate  English  girls  of  consumptive 
tendency,  partly  to  educate,  but  more  still  to  escape  the 
bitter  English  Christmas.  They  hired  a  villa — the  same 
every  year — on  a  slope  of  the  hills,  and  engaged  a  resident 
governess  to  accompany  them.  But,  as  chance  would 
have  it,  their  last  governess  had  just  gone  off,  in  the  nick 
of  time,  to  get  married  to  her  faithful  bank  clerk  at  Brix- 
ton;  so  here  was  an  opportunity  for  mutual  accommoda- 
tion. As  Edie  put  the  thing,  Elsie  might  almost  have 
supposed,  were  she  so  minded,  she  would  be  doing  Mrs. 
Relf  an  exceptional  favor  by  accepting  the  post  and  ac- 
companying them  to  Italy.  And,  to  say  the  truth,  a  Girton 
graduate  who  had  taken  high  honors  at  Cambridge  was 
certainly  a  degree  or  two  better  than  anything  the  delicate 
girls  of  consumptive  tendency  could  reasonably  have  ex- 
pected to  obtain  at  San  Remo.  But  none  the  less  the 
ofler  was  a  generous  one,  kindly  meant;  and  Elsie  ac- 
cepted it  just  as  it  was  intended.  It  was  a  fair  exchange 
of  mutual  services.  She  must  earn  her  own  livelihood 
wherever  she  went;  trouble,  however  deep,  has  always 
that  special  aggravation  and  that  special  consolation  for 
penniless  people;  and  in  no  other  house  could  she  pos- 
sibly have  earned  it  without  a  reference  or  testimonial 
from  her  last  employers.  The  Relfs  needed  no  such 
awkward  introduction.  This  arrangement  suited  both 
parties  admirably;  and  poor  heart-broken  Elsie,  in  her 
present  shattered  condition  of  nerves,  was  glad  enough 
to  accept  her  new  friends'  kind  hospitality  at  Lowestoft 
for  the  present,  till  she  could  fly  with  them  at  last,  early 
in  October,  from  this  desecrated  England  and  from  the 
chance  of  running  up  against  Hugh  Massinger. 


COMPLICATIONS.  157 

Her  whole  existence  summed  itself  up  now  in  the  one 
wish  to  escape  Hugh.  He  thought  her  dead.  She  hoped 
in  her  heart  he  might  never  again  discover  she  was  living. 

On  the  very  first  day  when  she  dared  to  venture  out  in 
a  Bath-chair,  muffled  and  veiled,  and  in  a  new  black  dress 
— lest  any  one  perchance  should  happen  to  recognize  her 
-—she  asked  to  be  wheeled  to  the  Lowestoft  pier;  and 
Edie,  who  accompanied  her  out  on  that  sad  first  ride, 
\valked  slowly  by  her  side  in  sympathetic  silence.  Warren 
Relf  followed  her  too,  but  at  a  safe  distance ;  he  could  not 
think  of  obtruding  as  yet  a  male  presence  upon  her  shame 
and  grief;  but  still  he  could  not  wholly  deny  himself 
either  the  modest  pleasure  of  watching  her  from  afar, 
unseen  and  unsuspected.  Warren  had  hardly  so  much  as 
caught  a  glimpse  of  Elsie  since  that  night  on  the  "Mud- 
Turtle;"  but  Elsie's  gentleness  and  the  profundity  of  her 
sorrow  had  touched  him  deeply.  He  began  indeed  to  sus- 
pect he  was  really  in  love  with  her;  and  perhaps  his  suspi- 
cion was  not  entirely  baseless.  He  knew  too  well,  however, 
the  depth  of  her  distress  to  dream  of  pressing  even  his  sym- 
pathy upon  her  at  so  inopportune  a  moment  If  ever  the 
right  time  for  him  came  at  all,  it  could  come,  he  knew, 
only  in  the  remote  future. 

At  the  end  of  the  pier,  Elsie  halted  the  chair,  and  made 
the  chairman  wheel  it  as  she  directed,  exactly  opposite 
one  of  the  open  gaps  in  the  barrier  of  woodwork  that  ran 
round  it.  Then  she  raised  herself  up  with  difficulty  from 
her  seat.  She  was  holding  something  tight  in  her  small 
right  hand;  she  had  drawn  it  that  moment  from  the  folds 
of  her  bosom.  It  was  a  packet  of  papers,  tied  carefully 
in  a  knot  with  some  heavy  object.  Warren  Relf,  observing 
cautiously  from  behind,  felt  sure  in  his  own  mind  it  was  a 
heavy  object  by  the  curve  it  described  as  it  wheeled 
through  the  air  when  Elsie  threw  it.  For  Elsie  had  risen 
now,  pale  and  red  by  turns,  and  was  flinging  it  out  with 
feverish  energy  in  a  sweeping  arch  far,  far  into  the  water. 
It  struck  the  surface  with  a  dull  thud — the  heavy  thud  of 
a  stone  or  a  metallic  body.  In  a  second  it  had  sunk  like 
lead  to  the  bottom,  and  Elsie,  bursting  into  a  silent  flood 
of  tears,  had  ordered  the  chairman  to  take  her  home  again. 


158  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

Warren  Relf,  skulking  hastily  down  the  steps  behind 
that  lead  to  the  tidal  platform  under  the  pier,  had  no  doubt 
at  all  in  his  own  mind  what  the  object  was  that  Elsie  had 
flung  with  such  fiery  force  into  the  deep  water;  for  that 
night  on  the  "Mud-Turtle,"  as  he  tried  to  restore  the  in- 
sensible girl  to  a  passing  gleam  of  life  and  consciousness, 
two  distinct  articles  had  fallen,  one  by  one,  in  the  hurry 
of  the  moment,  out  of  her  loose  and  dripping  bosom. 
He  was  not  curious,  but  he  couldn't  help  observing  them. 
The  first  was  a  bundle  of  water-logged  letters  in  a  hand 
which  it  was  impossible  for  him  not  to  recognize.  The 
second  was  a  pretty  little  lady's  watch,  in  gold  and  enamel, 
with  a  neat  inscription  engraved  on  a  shield  on  the  back, 
"E.  C.  from  H.  M.,"  in  Lombardic  letters.  It  wasn't 
Warren  Relf  s  fault  if  he  knew  then  who  H.  M.  was ;  and 
it  wasn't  his  fault  if  he  knew  now  that  Elsie  Challoner  had 
formally  renounced  Hugh  Massinger's  love,  by  flinging 
his  letters  and  presents  bodily  into  the  deep  sea,  where  no 
one  could  ever  possibly  recover  them. 

They  had  burnt  into  her  flesh,  lying  there  in  her  bosom. 
She  could  carry  them  about  next  her  bruised  and  wounded 
heart  no  longer.  And  now,  on  this  very  day  that  she  had 
ventured  out,  she  buried  her  love  and  all  that  belonged  to 
it  in  that  deep  where  Hugh  Massinger  himself  had  sent 
her. 

But  even  so,  it  cost  her  hard.  They  were  Hugh's  letters 
— those  precious  much-loved  letters.  She  went  home  that 
morning  crying  bitterly,  and  she  cried  till  night,  like  one 
who  mourns  her  lost  husband  or  her  lost  children.  They 
were  all  she  had  left  of  Hugh  and  of  her  day-dream.  Edie 
knew  exactly  what  she  had  done,  but  avoided  the  vain 
effort  to  comfort  or  console  her.  "Comfort — comfort 
scorned  of  devils!"  Edie  was  woman  enough  to  know 
she  could  do  nothing.  She  only  held  her  new  friend's 
hand  tight  clasped  in  hers,  and  cried  beside  her  in  mute 
sisterly  sympathy. 

It  was  about  a  week  later  that  Hugh  Massinger,  goaded 
by  remorse,  and  unable  any  longer  to  endure  the  suspense 
of  hearing  nothing  further,  directly  or  indirectly,  as  to 
Elsie's  fate,  set  out  one  morning  in  a  dogcart  from  White- 
strand,  and  drove  along  the  coast  with  his  own  thoughts, 


COMPLICATIONS.  159 

in  a  blazing  sunlight,  as  far  as  Aldeburgh.  There,  the 
road  abruptly  stops.  No  highway  spans  the  ridge  of 
beach  beyond :  the  remainder  of  the  distance  to  the  Low 
Light  at  Orfordness  must  be  accomplished  on  foot,  along 
a  flat  bank  that  stretches  for  miles  between  sea  and  river, 
untrodden  and  trackless,  one  bare  blank  waste  of  sand  and 
shingle.  The  ruthless  sun  was  pouring  down  upon  it  in 
full  force  as  Hugh  Massinger  began  his  solitary  tramp 
along  that  uneven  road  at  the  Martello  Tower,  just  south 
of  Aldeburgh.  The  more  usual  course  is  to  sail  by  sea; 
and  Hugh  might  indeed  have  hired  a  boat  at  Slaughden 
Quay  if  he  dared ;  but  he  feared  to  be  recognized  as  having 
come  from  Whitestrand  to  make  inquiries  about  the  un- 
claimed body;  for  to  rouse  suspicion  would  be  doubly 
unwise:  he  felt  like  a  murderer,  and  he  considered  him- 
self one  by  implication  already.  If  other  people  grew  to 
suspect  that  Elsie  was  drowned,  it  would  go  hard  but 
they  would  think  as  ill  of  him  as  he  himself  thought  of 
himself  in  his  bitterest  moments. 

For,  horrible  to  relate,  all  this  time,  with  that  burden  of 
agony  and  anguish  and  suspense  weighing  down  his  soul 
like  a  mass  of  lead,  he  had  had  to  play  as  best  he  might, 
every  night  and  morning,  at  the  ardor  of  young  love  with 
that  girl  Winifred.  He  had  had  to  imitate  with  hateful 
skill  the  wantonness  of  youth  and  the  ecstacy  of  the  hap- 
pily betrothed  lover.  He  had  had  to  wear  a  mask  of  pleas- 
ure on  his  pinched  face  while  his  heart  within  was  full  of 
bitterness,  as  he  cried  to  himself  more  than  once  in  his 
reckless  agony.  After  such  unnatural  restraint,  reaction 
was  inevitable.  It  became  a  delight  for  him  to  get  away 
for  once  from  that  grim  comedy,  in  which  he  acted  his 
part  with  so  much  apparent  ease,  and  to  face  the  genuine 
tragedy  of  his  miserable  life,  alone  and  undisturbed,  with 
his  own  remorseful  thoughts  for  a  few  short  hours  or  so. 
He  looked  upon  that  fierce  tramp  in  the  eye  of  the  sun, 
trudging  ever  on  over  those  baking  stones,  and  through 
that  barren  spit  of  sand  and  shingle,  to  some  extent  in 
the  light  of  a  self-imposed  penance — a  penance,  and  yet 
a  splendid  indulgence  as  well ;  for  here  there  was  no  one 
to  watch  or  observe  him.  Here  he  could  let  the  tears 
trickle  down  his  face  unreproved,  and  no  longer  pretend 


160  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

to  believe  himself  happy.  Here  there  was  no  Winifred  to 
tease  him  with  her  love.  He  had  sold  his  own  soul  for  a 
few  wretched  acres  of  stagnant  salt  marsh :  he  could  gloat 
now  at  his  ease  over  his  hateful  bargain;  he  could  call 
himself  "Fool"  at  the  top  of  his  voice;  he  could  groan  and 
sigh  and  be  as  sad  as  night,  no  man  hindering  him.  It 
was  an  orgy  of  remorse,  and  he  gave  way  to  it  with  wild 
orgiastic  fervor. 

He  plodded,  plodded,  plodded  ever  on,  stumbling 
wearily  over  that  endless  shingle,  thirsty  and  footsore, 
mile  after  mile,  yet  glad  to  be  relieved  for  awhile  from  the 
strain  of  his  long  hypocrisy,  and  to  let  the  tears  flow  easily 
and  naturally  one  after  the  other  down  his  parched  cheek. 
Truly  he  walked  in  the  gall  of  bitterness  and  in  the  bond 
of  iniquity.  The  iron  was  entering  into  his  own  soul ;  and 
yet  he  hugged  it.  The  gloom  of  that  barren  stretch  of 
water-worn  pebbles,  the  weird  and  widespread  desolation 
of  the  landscape,  the  fierce  glare  of  the  midday  sun  that 
poured  down  mercilessly  on  his  aching  head,  all  chimed 
in  congenially  with  his  present  brooding  and  melancholy 
humor,  and  gave  strength  to  the  poignancy  of  his  remorse 
and  regret.  He  could  torture  himself  to  the  bone  in  these 
small  matters,  for  dead  Elsie's  sake ;  he  could  do  penance, 
but  not  make  restitution.  He  couldn't  even  so  tell  out 
the  truth  before  the  whole  world,  or  right  the  two  women 
he  had  cruelly  wronged,  by  an  open  confession. 

At  last,  after  mile  upon  mile  of  weary  staggering,  he 
reached  the  Low  Light,  and  sat  down,  exhausted,  on  the 
bare  shingle  just  outside  the  lighthouse-keeper's  quarters. 
Strangers  are  rare  at  Orfordness;  and  a  morose-looking 
man,  soured  by  solitude,  soon  presented  himself  at  the 
door  to  stare  at  the  newcomer. 

"Tramped  it?"  he  asked  curtly,  with  an  inquiring  glance 
along  the  shingle  beach. 

"Yes,  tramped  it,"  Hugh  answered,  with  a  weary  sigh, 
and  relapsed  into  silence,  too  utterly  tired  to  think  of  how 
he  had  best  set  about  the  prosecution  of  his  delicate  in- 
quiry, now  that  he  had  got  there. 

The  man  stood  with  his  hand  on  his  hip,  and  watched 
the  stranger  long  and  close,  with  frank  mute  curiosity,  as 
one  watches  a  wild  beast  in  its  cage  at  a  menagerie.  At 


COMPLICATIONS.  IGI 

last  he  broke  the  solemn  silence  once  more  with  the  one 
inquisitive  word,  "Why?" 

"Amusement,"  Hugh  answered,  catching  the  man's 
laconic  humor  to  the  very  echo. 

For  twenty  minutes  they  talked  on,  in  this  brief  dis^ 
jointed  Spartan  fashion,  with  question  and  answer  as  to  the 
life  at  Orfordness  tossed  to  and  fro  like  a  quick  ball 
between  them,  till  at  last  Hugh  touched,  as  if  by  accident, 
but  with  supreme  skill,  upon  the  abstract  question  of  pro- 
visioning lighthouses.  , 

"Trinity  House  steam-cutter,"  the  man  replied  to  his 
short  suggested  query,  with  a  sidelong  jerk  of  his  head 
to  southward.  "Twice  a  month.  Pritty  fair  grub.  Biscuit 
and  pork  an'  tinned  meat  an'  soo  on." 

"Queer  employment,  the  cutter's  men,"  Hugh  inter- 
posed quietly.  "Must  see  a  deal  of  life  in  their  way  some- 
times." 

The  man  nodded.  "Yis,  an'  death  too,"  he  assented 
with  uncompromising  brevity. 

"Wrecks?" 

"And  corpsus." 

"Corpses?" 

"Ah,  corpsus,  I  believe  you.  Drownded  one.  Plenty  on 
'em." 

"Here?" 

"Sometimes.  But  moostly  on  the  north  side.  Drift 
wooth  the  tide.  Cutter's  man  found  one  oonly  a  week 
agoo  last  Sarraday.  Oover  hinder  against  that  groyne  to 
windwud." 

"Sailor?" 

"Not  this  time — gal — young  woman." 

"Where  did  she  come  from?"  Hugh  asked  eagerly,  yet 
suppressing  his  eagerness  in  his  face  and  voice  as  well  as 
he  was  able. 

"Doon't  know,  u'm  sure,"  the  man  answered  with  some- 
thing very  like  a  shrug.  "They  doon't  carry  their  naames 
and  poorts  wroot  on  their  foreheads  as  though  they  wor 
vessels.  Lowstof,  Whitestrand,  Southwold,  Aldeburgh — 
might  ha'  bin  any  on  'em." 

Hugh  continued  his  inquiries  with  breathless  interest 


162  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

a  few  minutes  longer,  then  he  asked  again  in  a  trembling 
voice:  "Any  jewelry  on  her?" 

The  man  eyed  him  suspiciously  askance.  Detective  in 
disguise,  or  what?  he  wondered.  "Ast  the  cutter's  man," 
he  drawled  out  slowly,  after  a  long  pause.  "If  there  was 
anything  val'able  on  the  corpse,  t'eent  likely  he'd  leave  it 
about  har  for  the  coroner  to  nail — not  he!" 

The  answer  cast  an  unexpected  flood  of  light  on  the 
seafaring  view  of  the  treasure-trove  of  corpses,  for  which 
Hugh  had  hardly  before  been  prepared  in  his  own  mind. 
That  would  account  for  her  not  having  been  recognized. 
"Did  they  hold  an  inquest?"  he  ventured  to  ask  nervously. 

The  lighthouse-man  nodded.  "But  whot's  the  use  o' 
that? — noo  evidence,"  he  continued.  "Moost  o'  theae 
drownded  bodies  aren't  'dentified.  Jury  browt  it  in  'Foun  d 
drownded.'  Convenient  vardick — save  a  lot  o'  trouble." 

"Where  do  they  bury  them?"  Hugh  asked,  hardly  able 
to  control  his  emotion. 

The  man  waved  his  hand  with  a  careless  dash  toward  a 
sandy  patch  just  beyond  the  High  Light.  "Cover  hinder," 
he  answered.  "There's  shiploads  on  'em  there.  Easy  dig- 
gin.'  Easier  than  the  shingle.  We  buried  the  crew  of  a 
Hamburg  brigantine  there  all  in  a  lump  last  winter.  They 
went  ashore  on  the  Oaze  Sands.  All  hands  drownded, 
about  a  baker's  dozen  on  'em.  Coroner  carne  oover  from 
Orford  an'  set  on  'em,  here  on  the  spot,  as  yow  may  say. 
That's  consecrated  ground.  Bishop  came  from  Norwich 
and  said  his  prayers  oover  it.  A  corpse  coon't  lay  better, 
nor  more  comfortable,  if  it  come  to  that,  in  Woodbridge 
Cemetery." 

He  laughed  low  to  himself  at  his  own  grim  wit;  and 
Hugh,  unable  to  conceal  his  disgust,  walked  off  alone,  as 
if  idly  strolling  in  a  solitary  mood,  toward  that  desolate 
graveyard.  The  lighthouse-man  went  back,  rolling  a 
quid  in  his  bulged  cheek,  to  his  monotonous  avocations. 
Hugh  stumbled  over  the  sand  with  blinded  eyes  and  tot- 
tering feet  till  he  reached  the  plot  with  its  little  group  of 
rude  mounds.  There  was  one  mound  far  newer  and 
fresher  than  all  the  rest,  and  a  wooden  label  stood  at  its 
head  with  a  number  roughly  scrawled  on  it  in  wet  paint— 
240."  His  heart  failed  and  sank  within  him.  So  this 


COMPLICATIONS.  163 

was  her  grave! — Elsie's  grave!  Elsie,  Elsie,  poor,  deso- 
late, abandoned,  heart-broken  Elsie. — He  took  off  his  hat 
in  reverent  remorse  as  he  stood  by  its  side.  Oh,  heavens, 
how  he  longed  to  be  dead  there  with  her!  Should  he 
fling  himself  off  the  top  of  the  lighthouse  now?  Should 
he  cut  his  throat  beside  her  nameless  grave?  Should  he 
drown  himself  with  Elsie  on  that  hopeless  stretch  of  wild 
coast?  Or  should  he  live  on  still,  a  miserable,  wretched, 
self-condemned  coward,  to  pay  the  penalty  of  his  cruelty 
and  his  baseness  through  years  of  agony. 

Elsie's  grave!  If  only  he  could  be  sure  it  was  really 
Elsie's!  He  wished  he  could.  In  time,  then,  he  might 
venture  to  put  up  a  headstone  with  just  her  initials — those 
sacred  initials.  But  no;  he  dared  not.  And  perhaps, 
after  all,  it  might  not  be  Elsie.  Corpses  came  up  here 
often  and  often.  Had  they  not  buried  whole  shiploads 
together,  as  the  lighthouse-man  assured  him,  after  a  ter- 
rible tempest? 

He  stood  there  long,  bareheaded  in  the  sun.  His  re- 
morse was  gnawing  the  very  life  out  of  him.  He  was 
rooted  to  the  spot.  Elsie  held  him  spellbound.  At  length 
he  roused  himself,  and  with  a  terrible  effort  returned  to  the 
lighthouse.  "Where  did  you  say  this  last  body  came 
up  ?"  he  asked  the  man  in  as  careless  a  voice  as  he  couM 
easily  master. 

The  man  eyed  him  sharp  and  hard.  "Yow  fare  anxious 
about  that  there  young  woman,"  he  answered  coldly. 
"She  Mooted  longside  by  the  groyne  oover  hinder.  Tide 
flung  har  up.  That's  where  they  moostly  do  come  ashore 
from  Lowstof  or  Whitestrand.  Current  sweep  'em  right 
along  the  coost  till  they  reach  the  ness:  then  it  fling 
'em  up  by  the  groyne  as  reg'lar  as  clockwork.  There's 
a  cross-current  there ;  that's  what  make  the  point  and  the 
sandbank." 

Hugh  faltered.  He  knew  full  well  he  was  rousing  sus- 
picion ;  yet  he  couldn't  refrain  for  all  that  from  gratifying 
his  eager  and  burning  desire  to  know  all  he  could  about 
poor  martyred  Elsie.  He  dared  not  ask  what  had  become 
of  the  clothes,  much  as  he  longed  to  learn,  but  he  wan- 
dered away  slowly,  step  after  step,  to  the  side  of  the 
groyne.  Its  further  face  was  sheltered  by  heaped-up 


164  THIS  MORTAL,  C  OIL. 

shingle  from  the  lighthouse-man's  eye.  Hugh  sat  down 
in  the  shade,  close  under  the  timber  balks,  and  looked 
around  him  along  the  beach  where  Elsie  had  been  washed 
ashore  a  lifeless  burden.  Something  yellow  glittered  on 
the  sand  hard  by.  As  the  sun  caught  it,  it  attracted  for  a 
second  his  casual  attention  by  its  golden  shimmering. 
His  heart  came  up  with  a  bound  into  his  mouth.  He 
knew  it — he  knew  it — he  knew  it  in  a  flash.  It  was 
Elsie's  watch!  Elsie's!  Elsie's!  The  watch  he  himself 
had  given — years  and  years  ago — no;  six  weeks  since 
only — as  a  birthday  present — to  poor  dear  dead  Elsie. 

Then  Elsie  was  dead!  He  was  sure  of  it  now*.  No 
need  for  further  dangerous  questioning.  It  was  by  Elsie's 
grave  indeed  he  had  just  been  standing.  Elsie  lay  buried 
there  beyond  the  shadow  of  a  doubt,  unknown  and  dis- 
honored. It  was  Elsie's  grave  and  Elsie's  watch.  What 
room  for  hope  or  for  fear  any  longer? 

It  was  Elsie's  watch,  but  rolled  by  the  current  from 
Lowestoft  pier,  as  the  lighthouse-man  had  rightly  told 
him  was  usual,  and  cast  ashore,  as  everything  else  was 
always  cast,  by  the  side  of  the  groyne  where  the  stream 
in  the  sea  turned  sharply  outward  at  the  extreme  eastern- 
jnost  point  of  Suffolk. 

He  picked  it  up  with  tremulous  fingers  and  kissed  it 
tenderly;  then  he  slipped  it  unobserved  into  his  breast- 
pocket, close  to  his  heart — Elsie's  watch! — and  began 
his  return  journey  with  an  aching  bosom,  over  those  hot 
bare  stones,  away  back  to  Aldeburgh.  The  beach  seemed 
longer  and  drearier  than  before.  The  orgy  of  remorse 
had  passed  away  now,  and  the  coolness  of 'utter  despair 
had  come  over  him  instead  of  it.  Half-way  on,  he  sat 
down  at  last,  wearier  than  ever,  on  the  long  pebble  ridge, 
and  gazed  once  more  with  swimming  eyes  at  that  visible 
token  of  Elsie's  doom.  Hope  was  dead'  in  his  heart  now. 
Horror  and  agony  brooded  over  his  soul.  The  world 
without  was  dull  and  dreary;  the  world  within  was  a 
tempest  of  passion.  He  would  freely  have  given  all  he 
possessed  that  moment  to  be  dead  'and  buried  in  one 
grave  with  Elsie. 

At  that  same  instant  at  the  Low  Light  the  ^  cutter's 


COMPLICATIONS.  165 

man,  come  across  in  an  open  boat  from  Orford,  was 
talking  carelessly  to  the  underling  at  the  lighthouse. 

"Well,  Tom,  bor,  how're  things  lookin'  wi'  yow?"  he 
asked  with  a  laugh. 

"Middlin'  like,  an'  that  stodgy,"  the  other  answered 
grimly.  "Ho\v  do  yow  git  on?" 

"Well,  we  ha'  tracked  down  that  there  body,"  the  Trin- 
ity House  man  said  casually;  "the  gal's,  I  mean,  what  I 
picked  up  on  the  ness;  an'  arter  all  my  trouble,  Tom, 
yow'll  hardly  believe  it,  but  blow  me  if  I  made  a  penny 
on  it." 

"Yow  din't?"  the  lighthouse-man  murmured  interro- 
gatively. 

"Not  a  farden,"  the  fellow  Bill  responded  in  a  discon- 
solate voice.  "The  body  worn't  a  nob's;  so  far,  in  that 
respeck,  she  worn't  nobody  arter  all,  but  oonly  one  o' 
them  there  light-o'-loves  down  hinder  at  Lowstof.  She 
was  a  sailor's  moll,  I  reckon.  Flung  harself  off  Lowstof 
pier  one  dark  night,  maybe  a  fortnight  agoo,  or  maybe 
three  weeks.  She'd  bin  hevin'  some  wuds  wooth  a  young 
man  she'd  bin  a-keepin'  company  wooth.  I  never  see  a 
more  promisin'  or  more  disappointin'  corpse  in  my  breath- 
in'  life.  When  I  picked  har  up,  I  say  to  Jim,  I  say,  'Yow 
may  take  yar  davy  on't,  bor,  that  this  gal  is  a  nob.  I  goo 
by  har  looks,  an'  I  'spect  there's  money  on  har.'  Why, 
har  dress  aloon  would  ha'  made  any  one  take  har  for  a 
real  lady.  And  arter  all,  what  do  it  amount  to?  Nothen 
at  all!  Jest  the  parish  paay  for  har.  That's  Suffolk  all 
cover,  and  rile  me  when  I  think  on't.  If  it  han't  bin  for  a 
val'able  in  the  way  o'  rings  what  fell  off  har  finger,  in  a 
manner  of  speakin,'  and  dropped  as  yow  may  say  into  an 
honest  man's  pocket  when  he  was  a-takin'  har  to  the 
dead-house — why,  it  fare  to  me,  that  there  honest  man 
would  a  bin  out  o'  pocket  a  matter  of  a  shillen  or  soo, 
and  all  thraow  the  interest  he  took  in  a  wuthless  an'  good- 
for-nothen  young  woman.  Corpsus  may  look  out  for 
theirselves  in  future,  as  far  as  I'm  consarned,  and  that's 
to  a  sartinty.  I  ha'  had  too  much  on  'em.  They're  more 
bother  than  they're  wuth.  That's  jest  the  long  an'  short 
on't — blow  me  if  it  een't." 


16$  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

CHAPTER  XIX. 

AU  RENDEZVOUS  DBS  SONS  CAMARADES. 

In  the  cosy  smoking-room  of  the  Cheyne  Row  Club,  a 
group  of  budding  geniuses,  convened  from  the  four  quar- 
ters of  the  earth,  stood  once  more  in  the  bay-window, 
looking  out  on  the  dull  October  street,  and  discussing 
with  one  another  in  diverse  tones  the  various  means  which 
each  had  adopted  for  killing  time  through  his  own  modi- 
cum of  summer  holidays.  Reminiscences  and  greetings 
were  the  order  of  the  day.  A  buzz  of  voices  pervaded  the 
air.  Everybody  was  full  to  the  throat  of  fresh  impres- 
sions, and  everybody  was  laudably  eager  to  share  them 
all,  still  hot  from  the  press,  with  the  balance  of  humanity 
as  then  and  there  represented  before  him. — The  mos- 
quitoes at  the  North  Cape  were  really  unendurable: 
they  bit  a  piece  out  of  your  face  bodily,  and  then  perched 
on  a  neighboring  tree  to  eat  it;  while  the  midnight  sun, 
as  advertised,  was  a  hoary  old  imposter,  exactly  like  any 
other  sun  anywhere,  when  you  came  to  examine  him 
through  a  smoked  glass  at  close  quarters. 

Cromer  was  just  the  jolliest  place  to  lounge  on  the 
sands,  and  the  best  center  for  short  excursions,  that  a 
fellow  could  find  on  a  year's  tramp  all  round  the  shores 
of  England,  Scotland,  Wales,  or  Ireland. 

Grouse  were  scanty  and  devilish  cunning  in  Aberdeen- 
shire  this  year;  the  young  birds  packed  like  old  ones; 
and  the  accommodation  at  Lumphanan  had  turned  out 
on  nearer  view  by  no  means  what  it  ought  to  be. 

A  most  delightful  time  indeed  at  Beatenberg,  just  above 
the  Lake  of  Thun,  you  know,  with  exquisite  views  over  the 
Bernese  Oberland;  and  such  a  pretty  little  Swiss  maiden, 
with  liquid  blue  eyes  and  tow-colored  hair,  to  bring  in 
one's  breakfast  and  pour  out  coffee  in  the  thick  white 
coffee-cups.  And  then  the  flowers!— a  perfect  paradise 
for  a  botanist,  I  assure  you. 

Montreal  in  August  was  hot  and  stuffy,  but  the  Thou- 
sand Islands  were  simply  delicious,  and  black-bass  fishing 
among  the  back  lakes  was  the  only  sport  now  left  alive 


AU  RENDEZVOUS  DES  EONS  CAMARADES.  167 

\vorthy  a  British  fisherman's  distinguished  consideration. 
Oh  yes;  the  yacht  behaved  very  well  indeed,  consider- 
ing, on  her  way  to  Iceland — as  well  as  any  yacht  that 
sailed  the  seas — but  just  before  reaching  Reykjavik — 
that's  how  they  pronounce  it,  with  the  j  soft  and  a  falling 
intonation  on  the  last  syllable — a  most  tremendous  gale 
came  thundering  down  with  rain  and  lightning  from  the 
Yatna  Jokull,  and,  by  George,  sir,  it  nearly  foundered 
her  outright  with  its  sudden  squalls  in  the  open  ocean. 
You  never  saw  anything  like  the  way  she  heeled  over; 
you  could  touch  the  trough  of  the  waves  every  time  from 
the  gunwale. 

Had  anything  new  been  going  on,  you  fellows,  while 
we  were  all  away?  and  had  anybody  heard  anything  about 
the  Bard,  as  Cheyne  Row  had  unanimously  nicknamed 
Hugh  Massinger? 

Yes,  one  budding  genius  in  the  descriptive-article  trade 
— the  wrriter  of  that  interesting  series  of  papers  in  the 
"Charing  Cross  Review"  on  Seaside  Resorts — afterward 
reprinted  in  crown  octavo  fancy  boards,  at  seven -and- 
sixpence,  as  "The  Complete  Idler" — had  had  a  letter  from 
the  Bard  himself  only  three  days  ago,  announcing  his 
intention  to  be  back  in  harness  in  town  again  that  very 
morning. 

"And  what's  the  Immortal  Singer  been  doing  with 
himself  this  hot  summer?"  cried  a  dozen  voices — for  it 
was  generally  felt  in  Cheyne  Row  circles  that  Hugh  Mas- 
singer,  though  still  as  undiscovered  as  the  sources  of  the 
Congo,  was  a  coming  man  of  proximate  eventuality. 
"Has  he  hooked  his  heiress  yet?  He  swore,  when  he 
left  town  in  July,  he  was  going  on  an  angling  expedition — 
as  a  fisher  of  women — in  the  eastern  counties." 

"Well,  yes,"  the  recipient  of  young  love's  first  con- 
fidences responded  guardedly;  "I  should  say  he  had.— 
To  be  sure,  the  Immortal  One  doesn't  exactly  'mention  the 
fact  or  amount  of  the  young  lady's  fortune ;  but  he  does 
casually  remark  in  a  single  passing  sentence  that  he  has 
^ot  himself  engaged  to  a  Thing  of  Beauty  somewhere 
down  in  Suffolk." 

"Suffolk! — most  congruous  indeed  for  an  idyllic,  bu- 
colic, impressionist  poet. — He'll  come  back  to  town  with 


168  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

a  wreath  round  his  hat,  and  his  pockets  stuffed  with 
stanzas  and  sonnets  to  his  mistress'  eyebrow,  where  'Suf- 
folk punches'  shall  sweetly  rhyme  to  'the  red-cheek  apple 
that  she  gaily  munches,'  with  slight  excursions  on  lunches, 
bunches,  crunches,  and  hunches,  all  a  la  Massinger,  in 
endless  profusion. — Now  then,  Hatherly;  there's  a 
guinea's  wortji  ready  made  for  you  to  your  hand  already. 
Send  it  by  the  first  post  yourself  to  the  lady,  and  cut  out 
the  Bard  on  his  own  ground  with  the  beautiful  and  anony- 
mous East  Anglian  heiress. — I  suppose,  by  the  way,  Mas- 
singer  didn't  happen  to  confide  to  you  the  local  habitation 
and  the  name  of  the  proud  recipient  of  so  much  interested 
and  anapaestic  devotion?" 

"He  said,  I  think,  if  I  remember  right,  her  name  was 
Meysey." 

"Meysey!  Oh,  then,  that's  one  of  the  Whitestrand 
Meyseys,  you  may  be  sure ;  daughter  of  old  Tom  Wy ville 
Meysey,  whose  estates  have  all  been  swallowed  up  by  the 
sea.  They  lie  in  the  prebend  of  Consumptum  per  Mare. 
— If  he's  going  to  marry  her  on  the  strength  of  her  red, 
red  gold,  or  of  her  vested  securities  in  Argentine  and 
Turkish,  he'll  have  to  collect  his  arrears  of  income  from 
a  sea-green  mermaid — at  the  bottom  of  the  deep  blue 
sea;  which  will  be  worse  than  even  dealing  with  that  hor- 
rid Land  League,  for  the  Queen's  writ  doesn't  run  beyond 
the  foreshore,  and  Xo  Rent  is  universal  law  on  the  bed  of 
the  ocean." 

"I  don't  think  they've  all  been  quite  swallowed  up," 
one  of  the  bystanders  remarked  in  a  pensive  voice:  he 
was  Suffolk  born;  ''at  least,  not  yet,  as  far  as  I've  heard 
of  them.  The  devouring  sea  is  engaged  in  taking  them 
a  bite  at  a  time,  like  Bob  Sawyer's  apple;  but  he's  left 
the  Hall  and  the  lands  about  it  to  the  present  day — so' 
Relf  tells  me." 

"Has  she  money,  I  wonder?"  the  editor  of  that  strug- 
gling periodical,  the  "Night- Jar,"  remarked  abstractedly. 

"Oh,  I  expect  so,  or  the  Bard  wouldn't  ever  have 
dreamt  of  proposing  to  her.  The  Immortal  Singer 
knows  his  own  worth  exactly,  to  four  places  of  decimals, 
and  estimates  himself  at  full  'market  value.  He's  the  last 
man  on  earth  to  throw  himself  away  for  a  mere  trifle. 


AU  RENDEZVOUS  DES  BONS  CAMARADES.  169 

When  he  sells  his  soul  in  the  matrimonial  exchange,  it'll 
be  for  the  highest  current  market  quotation,  to  an  eligible 
purchaser  for  cash  only,  who  must  combine  considerable 
charms  of  body  and  mind  with  the  superadded  advantage 
of  a  respectable  balance  at  Drummond's  or  at  Coutts'. 
The  Bard  knows  down  to  the  ground  the  exact  money- 
worth  of  a  handsome  poet;  he  wouldn't  dream  of  letting 
himself  go  dirt  cheap,  like  a  common  every-day  historian 
or  novelist." 

As  the  last  speaker  let  the  words  drop  carelessly  from 
his  mouth,  the  buzz  of  voices  in  the  smoking-room  paused 
suddenly:  there  was  a  slight  and  awkward  lull  in  the 
conversation  for  half  a  minute;  and  then  the  crowd  of 
budding  geniuses  was  stretching  out  its  dozen  right  hands 
with  singular  unanimity  in  rapid  succession  to  grasp  the 
ringers  of  a  tall  dark  new-comer  who  had  slipped  in,  after 
the  fashion  usually  attributed  to  angels  or  their  opposite, 
in  the  very  nick  of  time  to  catch  the  last  echoes  of  a  candid 
opinion  from  his  peers  and  contemporaries  upon  his  own 
conduct. 

"Do  you  think  he  heard  us?"  one  of  the  peccant  gos- 
sipers  whispered  to  another  with  a  scared  face. 

"Can't  say,"  his  friend  whispered  back  uneasily.  "He's 
got  quick  ears.  Listeners  generally  hear  no  good  of 
themselves.  But  anyhow,  we've  got  to  brazen  it  out  now. 
The  best  way's  just  to  take  the  bull  by  the  horns  boldly. — 
Well,  Massinger,  we  were  all  talking  about  you  when  you 
came  in.  You're  the  chief  subject  of  conversation  in 
literary  circles  at  the  present  day.  Do  you  know  it's 
going  the  round  of  all  the  clubs  in  London  at  this  moment 
that  you  shortly  contemplate  committing  matrimony?" 

Hugh  Massinger  drew  himself  up  stiff  and  erect  to  his 
full  height,  and  withered  his  questioner  with  a  scathing 
glance  from  his  dark  eyes  such  as  only  he  could  dart  at 
will  to  scarify  and  annihilate  a  selected  victim.  "I'm  going 
to  be  married  in  the  course  of  the  year,"  he  answered  cold- 
ly, "if  that's  what  you  mean  by  committing  matrimony. 
— Mitchison,"  turning  round  with  marked  abruptness  to 
an  earlier  speaker,  "what  have  you  been  doing  with  your- 
self all  the  summer?" 

"Oh,  I've  been  riding  a  bicycle  through  the  best  part  of 


170  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

Finland,  getting  up  a  set  of  articles  on  the  picturesque 
aspect  of  the  Far  North  for  the  'Porte-Crayon,'  you 
know,  and  at  the  same  time  working  in  the  Russian  an- 
archists for  the  leader  column  in  the  'Morning  Tele- 
phone.'— Bates  went  with  me  on  the  illegitimate  machine 
— yes,  that  means  a  tricycle ;  the  bicycle  alone's  accounted 
lawful:  he's  doing  the  sketches  to  illustrate  my  letter- 
press, or  I'm  doing  the  letterpress  to  illustrate  his  sketches 
—whichever  you  please,  my  little  dear;  you  pays  your 
money  and  takes  your  choice,  all  for  the  small  sum  of 
sixpence  weekly.  The  roads  in  Finland  are  abominably 
rough,  and  the  Finnish  language  is  the  beastliest  and 
most  agglutinative  I  ever  had  to  deal  with,  even  in  the 
entrancing  pages  of  Ollendorff.  But  there's  good  copy 
in  it — very  good  copy. — The  'Telephone'  and  the  'Porte- 
Crayon'  shared  our  expenses. — And  where  have  you  been 
hiding  your  light  yourself  since  we  last  saw  you?" 

"My  particular  bushel  was  somewhere  down  about  Suf- 
folk, I  believe,"  Hugh  Massinger  answered  with  mag- 
nificent indefiniteness,  as  though  minute  accuracy  to  the 
matter  of  a  county  or  two  were  rather  beneath  his  sublime 
consideration.  "I've  been  stopping  at  a  dead-alive  little 
place  they  call  Whitestrand :  a"  sort  of  moribund  fishing 
village,  minus  the  fish.  It's  a  lost  corner  among  the  mud- 
flats and  the  salt  marshes;  picturesque,  but  ugly,  and 
dull  as  ditch-water.  And  having  nothing  else  on  earth 
to  do  there,  I  occupied  myself  with  getting  engaged,  as 
you  fellows  seem  to  have  heard  by  telegraph  already.  This 
is  an  age  of  publicity.  Everything's  known  in  London 
nowadays.  A  man  can't  change  his  coat,  it  appears,  or 
have  venison  for  dinner,  or  wear  red  stockings,  or  stop  to 
chat  with  a  pretty  woman,  but  he  finds  a  flaring  paragraph 
about  it  next  day  in  the  society  papers." 
§  "May  one  venture  to  ask  the  lady's  name?"  Mitchison 
inquired  courteously,  a  little  apart  from  the  main  group. 

Hugh  Massinger's  manner  melted  at  once.  He  would 
no^be  chaffed,  but  it  rather  relieved  him,  in  his  present 
strained  condition  of  mind,  to  enter  into  inoffensive  con- 
fidences with  a  polite  listener. 

"She's  a  Miss  Meysey,"  he  said  in  a  lower  tone,  drawing 
over  toward  the  fireplace:  "one  of  the  Suffolk  Meyseys— 


AU  RENDEZVOUS  DES  BONS  CAMARADES.  171 

you've  heard  of  the  family.  Her  father  has  a  very  nice 
place  down  by  the  sea  at  Whitestrand.  They're  the  bank- 
ing people,  you  know:  remote  cousins  of  the  old  hanging 
judge's.  Very  nice  old  things  in  their  own  way,  though 
a  trifle  slow  and  out  of  date — not  to  say  mouldy. — But 
after  all,  rapidity  is  hardly  the  precise  quality  one  feels 
called  upon  to  exact  in  a  prospective  father-in-law:  slow- 
ness goes  with  some  solid  virtues.  The  honored  tortoise 
has  never  been  accused  by  its  deadliest  foes  of  wasting  its 
patrimony  in  extravagant  expenditure." 

"Has  she  any  brothers?"  Mitchison  asked  with  appar- 
ent ingenuousness,  approaching  the  question  of  Miss  Mey- 
sey's  fortune  (like  Hugh  himself)  by  obscure  byways,  as 
being  a  politer  mode  than  the  direct  assault.  "There  was 
a  fellow  called  Meysey  in  the  fifth  form  with  me  at  Win- 
chester, I  remember;  perhaps  he  might  have  been  some 
sort  of  relation." 

Hugh  shook  his  head  in  emphatic  dissent.  "No,"  he 
answered;  "the  girl  has  no  brothers.  She's  an  only  child 
— the  last  of  her  family.  There  was  one  son,  a  captain 
in  the  Forty-fourth,  or  something  of  the  sort;  but  he 
was  killed  in  Zululand,  and  was  never  at  Winchester,  or 
I'm  sure  I  should  have  heard  of  it. — They're  a  kinless  lot, 
extremely  kinless:  in  fact,  I've  almost  realized  the  highest 
ambition  of  the  American  humorist,  to  the  effect  that  he 
might  have  the  luck  to  marry  a  poor  lonely  friendless 
orphan." 

"She's  an  heiress,  then?" 

Hugh  nodded  assent.  "Well,  a  sort  of  an  heiress,"  he 
admitted  modestly,  as  who  should  say,  "not  so  good  as 
she  might  be."  "The  estate's  been  very  much  impaired 
by  the  inroads  of  the  sea  for  the  last  ten  years;  but  there's 
still  a  decent  remnant  of  it  left  standing.  Enough  for  a 
man  of  modest  expectations  to  make  a  living  off  in  these 
hard  times,  I  fancy." 

"Then  we  shall  all  come  down  in  due  time,"  another 
man  put  in — a  painter  by  trade — joining  the  group  as 
he  spoke,  "and  find  the  Bard  a  landed  proprietor  on  his 
own  broad  acres,  living  in  state  and  bounty  in  the  baronial 
Hall,  lord  of  Burleigh,  fair  and  free,  or  whatever  other 
name  the  place  may  be  called  by!" 


172  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

"If  I  invite  you  to  come,"  Hugh  answered  significantly 
with  curt  emphasis. 

"Ah  yes,  of  course,"  the  artist  answered.  "I  dare  say 
when  you  start  your  carriage,  you'll  be  too  proud  to  re- 
member a  poor  devil  of  an  oil  and  color-man  like  me. — 
In  those  days,  no  doubt  you'll  migrate  like  the  rest  to  the 
Athenaeum. — Well,  well,  the  world  moves — once  every 
twenty-four  hours  on  its  own  axis — and  in  the  long  run 
we  all  move  with  it  and  go  up  together. — When  I'm  an 
R.  A.,  I'll  run  down  and  visit  you  at  the  ancestral  man- 
sion, and  perhaps  paint  your  wife's  portrait — for  a  thou- 
sand guineas,  bien  entendu.  — And  what  sort  of  a  body 
is  the  prospective  father-in-law?" 

"Oh,  just  the  usual  type  of  Suffolk  Squire,  don't  you 
know,"  Massinger  replied  carelessly.  "A  breeder  of  fat 
oxen  and  of  pigs,  a  pamphleteer  on  Guano  and  on  Grain, 
a  quarter-session  chairman,  abler  none;  but  with  a  faint 
reminiscences  still  of  an  Oxford  training  left  in  him  to 
keep  the  milk  of  human  kindness  from  turning  sour  by 
long  exposure  to  the  pernicious  influence  of  the  East 
Anglian  sunshine.  I  should  enjoy  his  society  better,  how- 
ever, if  I  were  a  trifle  deaf.  He  has  less  to  say,  and  he  says 
it  more,  than  any  other  man  of  my  acquaintance.  Still, 
he's  a  jolly  old  boy  enough,  as  old  boys  go.  We  shall  rub 
along  somehow  till  he  pops  off  the  hooks  and  leaves  us 
the  paternal  acres  on  our  own  account  to  make  merry 
upon." 

So  far  Hugh  had  tried  with  decent  success  to  keep  up 
his  usual  appearance  of  careless  ease  and  languid  good- 
humor,  in  spite  of  volcanic  internal  desires  to  avoid  the 
painful  subject  of  his  approaching  marriage  altogether. 
He  was  schooling  himself,  indeed,  to  face  society.  He 
was  sure  to  hear  much  of  his  Suffolk  trip,  and  it  was  well 
to  get  used  to  it  as  early  as  possible.  But  the  next  ques- 
tion fairly  blanched  his  cheek,  by  leading  up  direct  to 
the  skeleton  imthe  cupboard:  "How  did  you  first  come 
to  get  acquainted  with  them?" 

The  question  must  inevitably  be  asked  again,  and  he 
must  do  his  best  to  face  it  with  pretended  equanimity. 
"A  relation  of  mine — a  distant  cousin — a  Girton  girl- 
was  living  with  the  family  as  Miss  Meysey's  governess 


AU  RENDEZVOUS  DES  BONS  CAMARADES.  173 

or  companion  or  something,"  he  answered  with  what 
jauntiness  he  could  summon  up.  "It  was  through  her 
that  I  first  got  to  know  my  future  wife.  And  old  Mr. 
Meysey,  the  coming  pap-in-law " 

He  stopped  dead  short.  Words  failed  him.  His  jaw 
fell  apruptly.  A  strange  thrill  seemed  to  course  through 
his  frame.  His  large  black  eyes  protruded  suddenly  from 
their  sunken  orbits;  his  olive-colored  cheek  blanched  pale 
and  pasty.  Some  unexpected  emotion  had  evidently 
checked  his  ready  flow  of  speech.  Mitchison  and  the 
painter  turned  round  in  surprise  to  see  what  might  be 
the  cause  of  this  unwonted  flutter.  It  was  merely  War- 
ren Relf  who  had  entered  the  club,  and  was  gazing  with 
a  stony  British  stare  from  head  to  foot  at  Hugh  Massinger. 

The  poet  wavered,  but  he  did  not  flinch.  From  the 
fixed  look  in  Relf's  eye,  he  felt  certain  in  an  instant  that 
the  skipper  of  the  "Mud-Turtle"  knew  something — if  not 
everything — of  his  fatal  secret.  How  much  did  he  know? 
and  how  much  not? — that  was  the  question.  Had  he 
tracked  Elsie  to  her  nameless  grave  at  Orfordness?  Had 
he  recognized  the  body  in  the  mortuary  at  the  lighthouse? 
Had  he  learned  from  the  cutter's  man  the  horrid  truth  as 
to  the  corpse's  identity?  All  these  things  or  any  one 
of  them  might  well  have  happened  to  the  owner  of  the 
"Mud-Turtle,"  cruising  in  and  out  of  East  Anglian  creeks 
in  his  ubiquitous  little  vessel.  Warren  Relf  was  plainly 
a  dangerous  subject.  But  in  any  case,  Hugh  thought 
with  shame,  how  rash,  how  imprudent,  how  unworthy  of 
himself  thus  to  betray  in  his  own  face  and  features  the 
terror  and  astonishment  with  which  he  regarded  him! 
He  might  have  known  Relf  was  likely  to  drop  in  any 
day  at  the  club !  He  might  have  known  he  would  sooner 
or  later  meet  him  there!  He  might  have  prepared  before- 
hand a  neat  little  lie  to  deliver  pat  with  a  casual  air  of  truth 
on  their  first  greeting!  And  instead  of  all  that,  here  he 
was,  discomposed  and  startled,  gazing  the  painter  straight 
in  the  face  like  a  dazed  fool,  and  never  knowing  how  or 
where  on  earth  to  start  any  ordinary  subject  of  polite 
conversation.  For  the  first  time  in  his  adult  life  he  was 
so  taken  aback  with  childish  awe  and  mute  surprise  that 
he  felt  positively  relieved  when  Relf  boarded  him  with 


174  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

the  double-barrelled  question:  "And  how  did  you  leave 
Miss  Meysey  and  Miss  Challoner,  Massinger?" 

Hugh  drew  him  aside  toward  the  back  of  the  room  and 
lowered  his  voice  still  more  markedly  in  reply.  "I  left 
Miss  Meysey  very  well,"  he  answered  with  as  much  ease 
of  manner  as  he  could  hastily  assume.  "You  may  per- 
haps have  heard  from  rumor  or  from  the  public  prints 
that  she  and  I  have  struck  up  an  engagement.  In  the 
lucid  language  of  the  newspaper  announcements,  a  mar- 
riage has  been  definitely  arranged  between  us." 

Warren  Relf  bent  his  head  in  sober  acquiescence.  "I 
had  herlrd  so,"  he  said  with  grim  formality.  "Your  siege 
was  successful.  You  carried  the  citadel  by  storm  that  day 
in  the  sandhills. — I  won't  congratulate  you.  You  know 
my  opinion  already  of  marriages  arranged  upon  that  mer- 
cantile basis.  I  told  it  you  beforehand.  We  need  not  now 
recur  to  the  subject. — But  Miss  Challoner? — How  about 
her?  Did  you  leave  her  well?  Is  she  still  at  White- 
strand?"  He  looked  his  man  through  and  through  as 
he  spoke,  with  a  cold  stern  light  in  those  truthful  eyes 
of  his. 

Hugh  Massinger  shuffled  uneasily  before  his  steadfast 
glance.  Was  it  only  his  own  poor  guilty  conscience,  or 
did  Relf  know  all?  he  wondered  silently.  The  man  was 
eyeing  him  like  his  evil  angel.  He  longed  for  time  to 
pause  and  reflect;  to  think  out  the  best  possible  non- 
committing  lie  in  answer  to  this  direct  and  leading  ques- 
tion. How  to  parry  that  deadly  thrust  on  the  spur  of 
the  moment  he  knew  not.  Relf  was  gazing  at  him  intent- 
ly. Hesitation  would  be  fatal.  He  blundered  into  the 
first  form  of  answer  that  came  uppermost.  "My  cousin 
Elsie  has  gone  away,"  he  stammered  out  in  haste.  "She 
— she  left  the  Meyseys  quite  abruptly." 

"As  a  consequence  of  your  engagement?"  Relf  asked 
sternly. 

This  was  going  one  step  too  far.  Hugh  Massinger  felt 
really  indignant  now,  and  his  indignation  enabled  him 
to  cover  his  retreat  a  little  more  gracefully.  "You  have 
no  right  to  ask  me  that,"  he  answered  in  genuine  anger. 
"My  private  relations  with  my  own  family  are  surely  no 
concern  of  yours  or  of  any  one's." 


AU  RENDEZVOUS  DES  BONS  CAMARADES.  175 

Warren  Relf  bowed  his  head  grimly  once  more.  "Where 
has  she  gone?"  he  asked  in  a  searching  voice.  "I'm 
interested  in  Miss  Challoner.  I  may  venture  to  inquire 
that  much  at  least.  I'm  told  you've  heard  from  her. 
Where  is  she  now?  Will  you  kindly  tell  me?" 

"I  don't  know,"  Hugh  answered  angrily,  driven  to  bay. 
Then  with  a  sudden  inspiration,  he  added  significantly: 
"Do  you  either?" 

"Yes,"  Warren  Relf  responded  with  solemn  directness. 

The  answer  took  Massinger  aback  once  more.  A  cold 
shudder  ran  down  his  spine.  Their  eyes  met.  For  a 
moment  they  stared  one  another  out.  Then  Hugh's 
glance  fell  slowly  and  heavily.  He  dared  not  ask  one 
word  more. — Relf  must  have  tracked  her,  for  certain,  to 
the  lighthouse.  He  must  have  seen  the  grave,  perhaps 
even  the  body. — This  was  too  terrible. — Henceforth,  it 
was  war  to  the  knife  between  them.  "Hast  thou  found 
me,  O  my  enemy?"  he  broke  out  sullenly. 

"I  have  found  you,  Massinger,  and  I  have  found  you 
out,"  the  painter  answered  in  a  very  low  voice,  with  a 
sudden  burst  of  unpremeditated  frankness.  "I  know  you 
now  for  exactly  the  very  creature  you  are — a  liar,  a  forger, 
a  coward,  and  only  two  ringers'  width  short  of  a  murderer. 
— There!  you  may  make  what  use  you  like  of  that. — 
For  myself,  I  will  make  no  use  at  all  of  it. — For  reasons 
of  my  own,  I  will  let  you  go.  I  could  crush  you  if  I 
would,  but  I  prefer  to  screen  you.  Still,  I  tell  you  once 
for  all  the  truth.  Remember  it  well. — I  know  it;  you 
know  it ;  and  we  both  know  we  each  of  us  know  it." 

Hugh  Massinger's  fingers  itched  inexpressibly  that  mo- 
ment to  close  round  the  painter's  honest  bronzed  throat 
in  a  wild  death-like  struggle.  He  was  a  passionate  man, 
and  the  provocation  was  terrible.  The  provocation  was 
terrible  because  it  was  all  true.  He  was  a  liar,  a  forger, 
a  coward — and  a  murderer! — But  he  dared  not — he  dared 
not.  To  thrust  those  hateful  words  down  Relf's  throat 
would  be  to  court  exposure,  and  worse  than  exposure; 
and  exposure  was  just  what  Hugh  Massinger  could 
never  bear  to  face  like  a  man.  Sooner  than  that,  the  river, 
or  aconite.  He  must  swallow  it  all,  proud  soul  as  he  was. 
He  must  swallow  it  all,  now  and  forever. 


176  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

As  he  stood  there  irresolute,  with  blanched  lips  and 
itching  fingers,  his  nails  pressed  hard  into  the  palms  of 
his  hands  in  the  fierce  endeavor  to  repress  his  passion,  he 
felt  a  sudden  light  touch  on  his  right  shoulder.  It  was 
Hatherly  once  more.  "I  say,  Massinger,"  the  journalist 
put  in  lightly,  all  unconscious  of  the  tragedy  he  was  in- 
terrupting, "come  down  and  knock  about  the  balls  on 
the  table  a  bit,  will  you?" 

If  Hugh  Massinger  was  to  go  on  living  at  all,  he  must 
go  on  living  in  the  wonted  fashion  of  nineteenth-century 
literate  humanity.  Tragedy  must  hide  itself  behind  the 
scenes;  in  public  he  must  still  be  the  prince  of  high 
comedians.  He  unclosed  his  hands  and  let  go  his  breath 
with  a  terrible  effort.  Relf  stood  aside  to  let  him  pass. 
Their  glances  met  as  Hugh  left  the  room  arm  in  arm  with 
Hatherly.  Relfs  was  a  glance  of  contempt  and  scorn; 
Hugh  Massinger's  was  one  of  undying  hatred. 

He  had  murdered  Elsie,  and  Relf  knew  it.  That  was 
the  way  Massinger  interpreted  to  himself  the  "Yes"  that 
the  painter  had  just  now  so  truthfully  and  directly  an- 
swered him. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

EVENTS  MARCH. 

"Papa  is  still  in  Scotland,"  Winifred  wrote  to  Hugh, 
"slaying  many  grouse;  and  mamma  and  I  have  the  place 
all  to  ourselves  now,  so  we're  really  having  a  lovely  time, 
enjoying  our  holiday  immensely  (though  you're  not  here), 
taking  down  everything,  and  washing  and  polishing,  and 
rearranging  things  again,  and  playing  havoc  with  the 
household  gods  generally.  We  expect  papa  back  Fri- 
day. His  birds  have  preceded  him.  I  do  hope  he  re- 
membered to  send  you  a  brace  or  two.  I  gave  him  your 
town  address  before  he  left,  with  very  special  directions 
to  let  you  have  some;  but,  you  know,  you  men  always 
forget  everything.  As  soon  as  he  comes  home,  he'll  make 
us  take  our  alterations  all  down  again,  which  will  be  a 


EVENTS   MARCH  177 

horrid  nuisance,  for  the  drawing-room  does  look  so  per- 
fectly lovely.  We've  done  it  up  exactly  as  you  recom- 
mended, with  the  sage  green  plush  for  the  old  mantel- 
piece, and  a  red  Japanese  table  in  the  dark  corner;  and 
I  really  think,  now  I  see  the  effect,  your  taste's  simply 
exquisite.  But  then,  you  know,  what  else  can  you  expect 
for  a  distinguished  poet!  You  always  do  everything 
beautifully — and  I  think  you're  a  darling." 

At  any  other  time  this  naive  girlish  appreciation  of  his 
decorative  talents  would  have  pleased  and  flattered  Hugh's 
susceptible  soul ;  for,  being  a  man,  he  was  of  course  vain ; 
and  he  loved  a  pretty  girl's  approbation  dearly.  But  just 
at  that  moment  he  had  no  stomach  for  praise,  even  though 
it  came  from  Sir  Hubert  Stanley;  and  whatever  faint  ris- 
ing flush  of  pleasure  he  might  possibly  have  felt  at  his  little 
fiancee's  ecstatic  admiration  was  all  crushed  down  again 
into  the  gall  of  bitterness  by  the  sickening  refrain  of  her 
repeated  postscripts:  "No  further  news  yet  from  poor 
Elsie. — Has  she  written  to  you?  I  shall  be  simply  frantic 
if  I  don't  hear  from  her  soon.  She  can  never  mean  to 
leave  us  all  in  doubt  like  this.  I'm  going  to  advertise  to- 
morrow in  the  London  papers.  If  only  she  knew  the 
state  of  mind  she  was  plunging  me  into,  I'm  sure  she'd 
write  and  relieve  my  suspense,  which  is  just  agonizing." — 
A  kiss  from  your  little  one :  in  the  corner  here.  Be  sure 
you  kiss  it  where  I've  put  the  cross.  Good-night,  darling 
Hugh. — Yours  ever,  Winifred." 

Hugh  flung  the  letter  down  on  the  floor  of  his  chamber 
in  an  agony  of  horror.  Was  his  crime  to  pursue  him  thus 
through  a  whole  lifetime?  Was  he  always  to  hear  sur- 
mises, conjectures,  speculations,  doubts  as  to  what  on 
earth  had  become  of  Elsie?  Was  he  never  to  be  free  for 
a  single  second  from  the  shadow  of  that  awful  pursuing 
episode?  Was  Winifred,  when  she  became  his  wedded 
wife,  to  torture  and  rack  him  for  years  together  with  ques- 
tions and  hesitations  about  the  poor  dead  child  who  lay, 
as  he  firmly  and  unreservedly  believed,  in  her  nameless 
grave  by  the  lighthouse  at  Orfordness? — There  was  Only 
one  possible  way  out  of  it — a  way  that  Hugh  shrank 
from  almost  as  much  as  he  shrank  from  the  terror  and 
shame  of  exposure.  It  was  ghastly:  it  was  gruesome: 


178  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

it  was  past  endurance;  but  it  was  the  one  solitary  way 
of  safety.  He  must  write  a  letter  from  time  to  time,  in 
Elsie's  handwriting,  addressed  to  Winifred,  giving  a  fic- 
titious account  of  Elsie's  doings  in  an  imaginary  home, 
away  over  somewhere  in  America  or  the  antipodes.  He 
must  invent  a  new  life  and  a  new  life-history,  under  the 
Southern  Cross,  for  poor  dead  Elsie:  he  must  keep  her 
alive  like  a  character  in  a  novel,  and  spin  her  fresh  sur- 
roundings from  his  own  brain,  in  some  little-known  and 
inaccessible  quarter  of  the  universe. 

But  then,  what  a  slavery,  what  a  drudgery,  what  a  per- 
petual torture!  His  soul  shrank  from  the  hideous  con- 
tinued deceit.  To  have  perpetrated  that  one  old  fatal 
forgery,  in  the  first  fresh  flush  of  terror  and  remorse,  was 
not  perhaps  quite  so  wicked,  quite  so  horrible,  quite  so 
soul-destroying  as  this  new  departure.  He  had  then  at 
least  the  poor  lame  excuse  of  a  pressing  emergency ;  and 
it  was  once  only.  But  to  live  a  life  of  consistent  lying — 
to  go  on  fathering  a  perennial  fraud — to  forge  pretended 
letters  from  mail  to  mail — to  invent  a  long  tissue  of  suc- 
cessful falsehoods — and  that  about  a  matter  that  lay  near- 
est and  dearest  to  his  own  wounded  and  remorseful  heart 
— all  this  was  utterly  and  wholly  repugnant  to  Hugh 
Massinger's  underlying  nature.  Set  aside  the  wickedness 
and  baseness  of  it  all,  the  poet  was  a  proud  and  sensitive 
man;  and  lying  on  such  an  extended  scale  was  abhorrent 
to  his  soul  from  its  mere  ignominy  and  aesthetic  repul- 
siveness.  He  liked  the  truth :  he  admired  the  open,  frank, 
straightforward  way.  Tortuous  cunning  and  mean  subter- 
fuges roused  his  profoundest  contempt  and  loathing — 
when  he  saw  them  in  others.  Up  till  now,  he  had  en- 
joyed his  own  unquestioning  self-respect.  Vain  and 
shallow  and  unscrupulous  as  he  was,  he  had  hitherto 

sked  serenely  in  the  sunshine  of  his  own  personal  appro- 
bation. He  had  done  nothing  till  lately  that  sinned 
against  his  private  and  peculiar  code  of  morals,  such  as 
His  proposal  to  Winifred  had,  for  the  first  time, 
opened  the  sluices  of  the  great  unknown  within  him,  and 

hornless  depths  of  deceit  and  crime  were  welling  up 

ow  and  crowding  in  upon  him  to  drown  and  obliterate 

whatever  spark  or  scintillation  of  conscience  had  ever  been 


EVENTS  MARCH.  179 

his.  It  was  a  hateful  sight.  He  shrank  himself  from  the 
effort  to  realize  it. 

And  Warren  Relf  knew  all!  That  in  itself  was  bad 
enough.  But  if  he  also  invented  a  continuous  lie  to  palm 
off  upon  Winifred  and  her  unsuspecting  people,  then 
Warren  Relf  at  least  would  know  it  constantly  for  what 
it  was,  and  despise  him  for  it  even  more  profoundly  than 
he  despised  him  at  present.  All  that  was  horrible — hor- 
rible— horrible.  Yet  there  was  one  person  whose  opin- 
ion mattered  to  him  far  more  than  even  Warren  Relf's — 
one  person  who  would  hate  and  despise  with  a  deadly 
hatred  and  utter  scorn  the  horrid  perfidy  of  his  proposed 
line  of  conduct.  That  person  was  one  with  whom  he  sat 
and  drank  familiarly  every  day,  with  whom  he  conversed 
unreservedly  night  and  morning,  with  whom  he  lived  and 
moved  and  had  his  being.  He  could  never  escape  or  de- 
ceive or  outwit  Hugh  Massinger.  Patriae  quis  exsul  se 
quoque  fugit?  Hugh  Massinger  would  dog  him,  and 
follow  his  footsteps  wherever  he  went,  with  his  un- 
feigned contempt  for  so  dirty  and  despicable  a  course  of 
action.  It  was  vile,  it  was  loathsome,  it  was  mean,  it 
was  horrible  in  its  ghastly  charnel-house  falseness  and 
foulness;  and  Hugh  Massinger  knew  it  perfectly.  If  he 
yielded  to  this  last  and  lowest  temptation  of  Satan,  he 
might  walk  about  henceforth  with  his  outer  man  a  whited 
sepulcher  but  within  he  would  be  full  of  dead  men's  bones 
and  vile  imaginings  of  impossible  evil. 

Thinking  which  things  definitely  to  himself,  in  his  own 
tormented  and  horrified  soul,  he — sat  down  and  wrote 
another  forged  letter. 

It  was  a  hasty  note,  written  as  in  the  hurry  and  bustle 
of  departure,  on  the  very  eve  of  a  long  journey,  and  it  told 
Winifred,  in  rapid  general  terms,  that  Elsie  was  just  on 
her  way  to  the  continent,  en  route  for  Australia — no  mat- 
ter where.  She  would  join  her  steamer  (no  line  men- 
tioned) under  an  assumed  name,  perhaps  at  Marseilles, 
perhaps  at  Genoa,  perhaps  at  Naples,  perhaps  at  Brindisi. 
Useless  to  dream  of  tracking  or  identifying  her.  She 
was  going  away  from  England  for  ever  and  ever — this  last 
underlined  in  feminine  fashion — and  it  would  be  quite 
hopeless  for  Winifred  to  cherish  the  vain  idea  of  seeing 


180  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

her  again  in  this  world  of  misfortunes.  Some  day,  per- 
haps, her  conduct  would  be  explained  and  vindicated; 
for  the  present,  it  must  suffice  that  letters  sent  to  her  at 
the  address  as  before — the  porter's  of  the  Cheyne  Row 
Club,  though  Hugh  did  not  specifically  mention  that  fact 
— would  finally  reach  her  by  private  arrangement.  Would 
Winifred  accept  the  accompanying  ring,  and  wear  it  always 
on  her  own  finger,  as  a  parting  gift  from  her  affectionate 
and  misunderstood  friend,  Elsie? 

The  ring  was  one  from  the  little  jewel-case  he  had  stolen 
that  fatal  night  from  Elsie's  bedroom.  Profoundly  as  he 
hated  and  loathed  himself  for  his  deception,  he  couldn't 
help  stopping  half  way  through  to  admire  his  own  devilry 
of  cleverness  in  sending  that  ring  back  now  to  Winifred. 
Nothing  could  be  so  calculated  to  disarm  suspicion.  Who 
could  doubt  that  Elsie  was  indeed  alive,  when  Elsie  not 
only  wrote  letters  to  her  friends,  but  sent  with  them  the 
very  jewelry  from  her  own  fingers  as  a  visible  pledge  and 
token  of  her  identity? — Besides,  he  really  wanted  Wini- 
fred to  wear  it;  he  wished  her  to  have  something  that 
once  was  Elsie's.  He  would  like  the  woman  he  was  now 
deceiving  to  be  linked  by  some  visible  bond  of  memory 
to  the  woman  he  had  deceived  and  lured  to  her  destruc- 
tion. 

He  kissed  the  ring,  a  hot  burning  kiss,  and  wrapped  it 
reverently  and  tenderly  in  cotton-wool.  That  done,  he 
gummed  and  stamped  the  letter  with  a  resolute  air, 
crushed  his  hat  firmly  down  on  his  head,  and  strode  out 
with  feverishly  long  strides  from  his  rooms  in  Jermyn 
Street  to  the  doubtful  hospitality  of  the  Cheyne  Row. 

Would  Warren  Relf  be  there  again,  he  wondered?  Was 
that  man  to  poison  half  London  for  him  in  future? — 
Why  on  earth,  knowing  the  whole  truth  about  Elsie — 
knowing  that  Elsie  was  dead  and  buried  at  Orfordness — 
did  the  fellow  mean  to  hold  his  vile  tongue  and  allow  him, 
Hugh  Massinger,  to  put  about  this  elaborate  fiction  un- 
checked, of  her  sudden  and  causeless  disappearance?  In- 
explicable quite!  The  thing  was  a  mystery;  and  Hugh 
Massinger  hated  mysteries.  He  could  never  know  now 
at  what  unexpected  moment  Warren  Relf  might  swoop 
down  upon  him  from  behind  with  a  dash  and  a  crash  and 


EVENTS   MARCH.  181 

an  explosive  exposure. — He  was  working  in  the  dark,  like 
navvies  in  a  tunnel. — Surely  the  crash  must  come  some 
day!  The  roof  must  collapse  and  crush  him  utterly.  It 
was  ghastly  to  wait  in  long  blind  expectation  of  it. 

The  forged  letter  still  remained  in  his  pocket  unposted. 
He  passed  a  couple  of  pillar-boxes,  but  could  not  nerve 
himself  up  to  drop  it  in.  Some  grain  of  grace  within  him 
was  fighting  hard  even  now  for  the  mastery  of  his  soul. 
He  shrank  from  committing  himself  irrevocably  by  a 
single  act  to  that  despicable  life  of  ingrained  deception. 
•  In  the  smoking-room  of  the  club  he  found  nobody, 
for  it  was  still  early.  He  took  up  the  "Times,"  which 
he  had  not  yet  had  time  to  consult  that  morning.  In 
the  Agony  Column,  a  familiar  conjunction  of  names  at- 
tracted his  eye  as  it  moved  down  the  outer  sheet.  They 
were  two  names  never  out  of  his  thoughts  for  a  moment 
for  the  last  fortnight.  "Elsie,"  the  advertisement  ran  in 
clear  black  type,  "Do  write  to  me.  I  can  stand  this  fearful 
suspense  no  longer.  Only  a  few  lines  to  say  you  are 
well.  I  am  so  frightened.  Ever  yours,  Winifred." 

He  laid  the  paper  down  with  a  sudden  resolve,  and 
striding  across  the  room  gloomily  to  the  letter-box  on  the 
mantel-piece,  took  the  fateful  envelope  from  his  pocket 
at  last,  and  held  it  dubious,  between  finger  and  thumb, 
dangling  loose  over  the  slit  in  the  lid.  Heaven  and  hell 
still  battled  fiercely  for  the  upper  hand  within  him.  Should 
he  drop  it  in  boldly,  or  should  he  not?  To  be  or  not  to 
be — a  liar  for  life? — that  was  the  question.  The  envelope 
trembled  between  his  finger  and  thumb.  The  slit  in  the 
box  yawned  hungry  below.  His  grasp  was  lax.  The 
letter  hung  by  a  corner  only.  Nor  was  his  impulse,  even, 
so  wholly  bad :  pity  for  Winifred  urged  him  on ;  remorse 
and  horror  held  him  back  feebly.  He  knew  not  in  his 
own  soul  how  to  act;  he  knew  he  was  weak  and  wicked 
only. 

As  he  paused  and  hesitated,  unable  to  decide  for  good 
or  evil — a  noise  at  the  door  made  him  start  and  waver. — 
Somebody  coming!  Perhaps  Warren  Relf. — That  address 
on  the  envelope — "Miss  Meysey,  The  Hall,  Whitestrand, 
Suffolk." — If  Relf  saw  it,  he  would  know  it  was — well — 
an  imitation  of  Elsie's  handwriting.  She  had  sent  a  note 


182  THIS  MORTAL,  C  OIL. 

to  Relf  on  the  morning  of  the  sandhills  picnic.  If  any  one 
else  saw  it,  they  would  see  at  least  it  was  a  letter  to  his 
fiancee — and  they  would  chaff  him  accordingly  with  chaff 
that  he  hated,  or  perhaps  they  would  only  smile  a  superior 
smile  of  fatuous  recognition  and  smirking  amusement. 
He  could  stand  neither — above  all,  not  Relf. — His  fingers 
relaxed  upon  the  cover  of  the  envelope. — Half  uncon- 
sciously, half  unwillingly,  he  loosened  his  hold. — Plop! 
it  fell  through  that  yawning  abyss,  three  inches  down, 
but  as  deep  as  perdition  itself. — The  die  wras  cast!  A  liar 
for  a  lifetime ! 

He  turned  round,  and  Hatherley,  the  journalist,  stood 
smiling  good-morning  by  the  open  doorway.  Hugh  Mas- 
singer  tried  his  hardest  to  look  as  if  nothing  out  of  the 
common  had  happened  in  any  way.  He  nodded  to  Hath- 
erley, and  buried  his  face  once  more  in  the  pages  of  the 
"Times."  "The  Drought  in  Wales"— "The  Bulgarian 
Difficulty" — "Painful  Disturbances  on  the  West  Coast 
of  Africa." — Pah !  What  nonsense !  What  commonplaces 
of  opinion!  It  made  his  gorge  rise  with  disgust  to  look 
at  them.  Wales  and  Bulgaria  and  the  \Vest  Coast  of 
Africa,  when  Elsie  was  dead!  dead  and  unnoticed! 

A  boy  in  buttons  brought  in  a  telegram — Central 
News  Agency — and  fixed  it  by  the  corners  with  brass- 
headed  pins  in  a  vacant  space  on  the  accustomed  notice- 
board.  Hatherley,  laying  down  his  copy  of  "Punch," 
strolled  lazily  over  to  the  board  to  examine  it.  "Meysey! 
JVleysey!"  he  repeated  musingly.— "Why,  Massinger,  that 
must  be  one  of  your  Whitestrand  Meyseys.  Precious 
uncommon  name.  There  can't  be  many  of  them." 

Hugh  rose  and  glanced  at  the  new  telegram  uncon- 
cernedly. It  couldn't  have  much  to  do  with  himself!  But 
its  terms  brought  the  blood  with  a  hasty  rush  to  his  pale 
cheek  again.  "Serious  Accident  on  the  Scotch  Moors.— 
Aberdeen,  Thursday.  As  Sir  Malcolm  Farquharson's 
party  were  shooting  over  the  Glenbeg  estate  yesterday, 
near  Kmcardine-O'Neil,  a  rifle  held  by  Mr.  Wyville  Mey- 
sey burst  suddenly,  wounding  the  unfortunate  gentleman 
in  the  face  and  neck,  and  lodging  a  splinter  of  jagged 
metal  in  his  left  temple.  He  was  conveyed  at  once  from 
tne  spot  m  an  insensible  state  to  Invertanar  Castle,  where 


EVENTS   MARCH.  183 

he  now  lies  in  a  most  precarious  condition.    His  wife  and 
daughter  were  immediately  telegraphed  for." 

"Invertanar,  10:40  a.  m. — Mr.  Wyville  Meysey,  a  guest 
of  Sir  Malcolm  Farquharson's  at  Invertanar  Castle, 
wounded  yesterday  by  the  bursting  of  his  rifle  on  the 
Glenbeg  moors,  expired  this  morning  very  suddenly  at 
9:20.  The  unfortunate  gentleman  did  not  recover  con- 
sciousness for  a  single  moment  after  the  fatal  accident." 

A  shudder  of  horror  ran  through  Hugh's  frame  as  he 
realized  the  meaning  of  that  curt  announcement.  Not  for 
the  mishap;  not  for  Mrs.  Meysey;  not  for  Winifred:  oh, 
dear  no ;  but  for  his  own  possible  or  rather  probable  dis- 
comfiture.— His  first  thought  was  a  characteristic  one. 
Mr.  Meysey  had  died  unexpectedly.  There  might  or 
there  might  not  be  a  will  forthcoming.  Guardians  might 
or  might  not  be  appointed  for  his  infant  daughter.  The 
estate  might  or  might  not  go  to  Winifred.  He  might  or 
he  might  not  now  be  permitted  to  marry  her. — If  she  hap- 
pened to  be  left  a  ward  in  Chancery,  for  example,  it  would 
be  a  hopeless  business :  his  chance  would  be  ruined.  The 
court  would  never  consent  to  accept  him  as  Winifred's 
husband.  And  then — and  then  it  would  be  all  up  with 
him. 

It  was  bad  enough  to  have  sold  his  own  soul  for  a  mess 
of  pottage — for  a  few  hundred  acres  of  miserable  salt 
marsh,  encroached  upon  by  the  sea  with  rapid 
strides,  and  half  covered  with  shifting,  drifting  sandhills. 
It  was  bad  enough  to  have  sacrificed  Elsie — dear,  tender, 
delicate,  loving-hearted  Elsie,  his  own  beautiful,  sacred, 
dead  Elsie — to  that  wretched,  sordid,  ineffective  avarice, 
that  fractional  worship  of  a  silver-gilt  Mammon.  He  had 
regretted  all  that  in  sackcloth  and  ashes  for  one  whole 
endless  hopeless  fortnight  or  more,  already. — But  to  have 
sold  his  own  soul  and  to  have  sacrificed  Elsie  for  the  priv- 
ilege of  being  rejected  by  Winifred's  guardian — for  the 
chance  of  being  publicly  and  ignominiously  jilted  by  the 
Court  of  Chancery — for  the  opportunity  of  becoming  a 
common  laughing-stock  to  the  quidnuncs  of  Cheyne  Row 
and  the  five  o'clock  tea-tables  of  half  feminine  London — 
that  was  indeed  a  depth  of  possible  degradation  from  which 
his  heart  shrank  with  infinite  throes  of  self-commiserating 


184  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

reluctance.  He  could  sell  his  own  soul  for  very  little,  and 
despise  himself  well  for  the  squalid  ignoble  bargain;  but 
to  sell  his  own  soul  for  absolutely  nothing,  with  a  dose  of 
well-deserved  ridicule  thrown  in  gratis,  and  no  Elsie  to 
console  him  for  his  bitter  loss,  was  more  than  even  Hugh 
Massinger's  sense  of  mean  self-abnegation  could  easily 
swallow. 

He  flung  himself  back  unmanned,  in  the  big  leather- 
covered  armchair,  and  let  the  abject  misery  of  his  own 
thoughts  overcome  him  visibly  in  his  rueful  countenance. 

"I  never  imagined,"  said  Hatherley  afterward  to  his 
friends,  the  Relfs,  "that  Massinger  could  possibly  have  felt 
anything  so  much  as  he  seemed  to  feel  the  sudden  death 
of  his  prospective  father-in-law,  when  he  read  that  .tele- 
gram. It  really  made  me  think  better  of  the  fellow." 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

CLEARING  THE  DECKS. 

Warren  Relf  had  arranged  for  his  mother  and  sister,  with 
Elsie  Challoner,  to  seek  the  friendly  shelter  of  San  Remo 
early  in  October.  The  sooner  away  from  England  the 
better.  Before  they  went,  however,  to  avert  the  chance  of 
a  disagreeable  encounter,  he  met  them  on  their  arrival  in 
town  at  Liverpool  Street,  and  saw  them  safely  across  to 
the  continental  train  at  London  Bridge.  It  chanced  to 
be  the  very  self-same  day  that  Hugh  Massinger  had  posted 
his  second  forged  note  to  poor  fatherless  Winifred. 

Elsie  dared  hardly  look  the  young  painter  in  the  face 
even  now,  for  shame  and  timidity;  and  Warren  Relf,  re- 
specting her  natural  sensitiveness,  concentrated  most  of 
his  attention  on  his  mother  and  Edie,  scarcely  allowing 
Elsie  to  notice  by  shy  side-glances  his  unobtrusive  prepa- 
rations for  her  own  personal  comfort  on  the  journey.  But 
Elsie's  quick  eye  observed  them  all,  gratefully,  none  the 
less  for  that.  She  liked  Warren:  it  was  impossible  for 
anybody  not  to  like  and  respect  the  frank  young  painter, 


CLEARING  THE  DECKS.  185 

with  his  honest  bronzed  face,  and  his  open,  manly,  out- 
spoken manners.  Timid  as  she  was  and  broken-hearted 
still,  she  could  not  go  away  from  England  forever  and  ever 
— for  Elsie  never  meant  to  return  again — without  thanking 
him  just  once  in  a  few  short  words  for  all  his  kindness.  As 
they  stood  on  the  bare  and  windy  platform  with  which  the 
South-Eastern  Railway  Company  wooes  our  suffrages  at 
London  Bridge,  she  drew  him  aside  for  a  moment  from 
his  mother  and  sister  with  a  little  hasty  shrinking  glance 
which  Warren  could  not  choose  but  follow.  "Mr.  Relf," 
she  said,  looking  down  at  the  floor  and  fumbling  with  her 
parasol,  "I  want  to  thank  you;  I  can't  go  away  without 
thanking  you  once." 

He  saw  the  effort  it  had  cost  her  to  say  so  much,  and 
a  wild  lump  rose  sudden  in  his  throat  for  gratitude  and 
pleasure.  "Miss  Challoner,"  he  answered,  looking  back 
at  her  with  an  unmistakable  light  in  his  earnest  eyes,  "say 
nothing  else.  I  am  more  than  sufficiently  thanked  already. 
— I  have  only  one  thing  to  say  to  you  now.  I  know 
you  wish  this  episode  kept  secret  from  every  one:  you 
may  rely  upon  me  and  upon  my  mate  in  the  yawl.  If 
ever  in  my  life  I  can  be  of  any  service  to  you,  remember 
you  can  command  me. — If  not,  I  shall  never  again  ob- 
trude myself  upon  your  memory. — Good-bye,  good-bye." 
And  taking  her  hand  one  moment  in  his  own,  he  held  it 
for  a  second,  then  let  it  drop  again.  "Now  go,"  he  said  in 
a  tremulous  voice — "go  back  to  Edie." 

Elsie — one  blush — went  back  a^  he  bade  her.  "Good- 
bye," she  said,  as  she  glided  from  his  side — "good-bye, 
and  thank  you."  That  was  all  that  passed  between  those 
two  that  day.  Yet  Elsie  knew,  with  profound  regret,  as 
the  train  steamed  off  through  the  draughty  corridors  on 
its  way  to  Dover,  that  Warren  Relf  had  fallen  in  love  with 
her;  and  Warren  Relf,  standing  alone  upon  the  dingy, 
gusty  platform,  knew  with  an  ecstacy  of  delight  and  joy 
that  Elsie  Challoner  was  grateful  to  him  and  liked  him. 
It  is  something,  gratitude.  He  valued  that  more  from 
Elsie  Challoner  than  he  would  have  valued  love  from  any 
other  woman. 

With  profound  regret,  for  her  part,  Elsie  saw  that  War- 
ren Relf  had  fallen  in  love  with  her;  because  he  was  such 


186  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

an  honest,  manly,  straightforward,  good  fellow,  and  be- 
cause from  the  very  first  moment  she  had  liked  him.  Yet 
what  to  her  were  love  and  lovers  now?  Her  heart  lay 
buried  beneath  the  roots  of  the  poplar  at  Whitestrand,  as 
truly  as  Hugh  Massinger  thought  it  lay  buried  in  the 
cheap  sea-washed  grave  in  the  sand  at  Orfordness.  She 
was  grieved  to  think  this  brave  and  earnest  man  should 
have  fixed  his  heart  on  a  hopeless  object  It  was  well 
she  was  going  to  San  Remo  forever.  In  the  whirl  and 
bustle  and  hurry  of  London  life,  Warren  Relf  would 
doubtless  soon  forget  her.  But  some  faces  are  not  easily 
forgotten. 

From  London  Bridge,  Warren  Relf  took  the  Metropol- 
itan to  St.  James'  Park,  and  walked  across,  still  flushed 
and  hot,  to  Piccadilly.  At  the  club,  he  glanced  hastily  at 
that  morning's  paper.  The  first  paragraph  on  which  his 
eye  lighted  was  Winifred  Meysey's  earnest  advertisement 
in  the  Agony  Column.  It  gave  him  no  little  food  for 
reflection.  If  ever  Elsie  saw  that  advertisement,  it  might 
alter  and  upset  all  her  plans  for  the  future — and  all  his 
own  plans  into  the  bargain.  Already  she  felt  profoundly 
the  pain  and  shame  of  her  false  position  with  Winifred  and 
the  Meyseys:  that  much  Warren  Relf  had  learned  from 
Edie.  If  only  she  knew  how  eagerly  Winifred  pined  for 
news  of  her,  she  might  be  tempted  after  all  to  break  her 
reserve,  to  abandon  her  concealment,  and  to  write  full 
tidings  of  her  present  whereabouts  to  her  poor  little  fright- 
ened and  distressed  pupil.  That  would  be  bad ;  for  then 
the  whole  truth  must  sooner  or  later  come  out  before  the 
world;  and  for  Elsie's  sake,  for  Winifred's  sake,  perhaps 
even  a  wee  bit  for  his  own  sake  also,  Warren  Relf  shrank 
unspeakably  from  that  unhappy  exposure.  He  couldn't 
bear  to  think  that  Elsie's  poor  broken  bleeding  heart 
should  be  laid  open  to  its  profoundest  recesses  before  the 
eyes  of  society,  for  every  daw  of  an  envious  old  dowager 
to  snap  and  peck  at.  He  hoped  Elsie  would  not  see  the 
advertisement.  If  she  did,  he  feared  her  natural  tender- 
ness and  her  own  sense  of  self-respect  would  compel  her 
to  write  the  whole  truth  to  Winifred. 

She  might  see  it  at  Marseilles,  for  they  were  going  to 
run  nght  through  to  the  Mediterranean  by  the  special 


CLEARING  THE  DECKS.  187 

express,  stopping  a  night  to  rest  themselves  at  the  Hotel 
du  Louvre  in  the  Rue  Cannebiere.  Edie  would  be  sure 
to  look  at  the  "Times,"  and  if  she  saw  the  advertisement, 
to  show  it  to  Elsie. 

But  even  if  she  didn't,  ought  he  not  himself  to  call  her 
attention  to  it?  Was  it  right  of  him,  having  seen  it,  not 
to  tell  her  of  it?  Should  he  not  rather  leave  to  Elsie  her- 
self the  decision  what  course  she  thought  best  to  take 
under  these  special  circumstances? 

He  shrank  from  doing  it  It  grieved  him  to  the  quick 
to  strain  her  poor  broken  heart  any  further.  She  had 
suffered  so  much:  why  rake  it  all  up  again?  And  even 
as  he  thought  all  these  things,  he  knew  each  moment  with 
profounder  certainty  than  ever  that  he  loved  Elsie.  There 
is  nothing  on  earth  to  excite  a  man's  love  for  a  beautiful 
woman  like  being  compelled  to  take  tender  care  for  that 
woman's  happiness — having  a  gentle  solicitude  for  her 
most  sacred  feelings  thrust  upon  one  by  circumstances  as 
an  absolute  necessity. — Still,  Warren  Relf  was  above  all 
things  honest  and  trustworthy.  Not  to  send  that  adver- 
tisement straight  to  Elsie,  even  at  the  risk  of  hurting  her 
own  feelings,  would  constitute  in  some  sort,  he  felt,  a 
breach  of  confidence,  a  constructive  falsehood,  or  at  the 
very  best  a  suppressio  veri;  and  Warren  Relf  was  too 
utterly  and  transparently  truthful  to  allow  for  a  moment 
any  paltering  with  essential  verities. — He  sighed  a  sigh  of 
profound  regret  as  he  took  his  penknife  with  lingering 
hesitation  from  his  waistcoat  pocket.  But  he  boldly  cut 
out  the  advertisement  from  the  Agony  Column,  none  the 
less,  thereby  defacing  the  first  page  of  the  "Times,"  and 
rendering  himself  liable  to  the  censure  of  the  committee 
for  wanton  injury  to  the  club  property;  after  the  perpetra- 
tion of  which  heinous  offense  he  walked  gravely  and 
soberly  into  the  adjoining  writing-room  and  sat  down 
to  indite  a  hasty  note  intended  for  his  sister  at  the  Hotel 
du  Louvre: 

"My  dear  Edie: 

"Just  after  you  left,  I  caught  sight  of  enclosed 
advertisement  in  the  second  column  of  this  morning's 
Times/  Show  it  to  Her.  I  can't  bear  to  send  it — I  can't 


188  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

bear  to  cause  her  any  further  trouble  or  embarrassment 
of  any  sort  after  all  she  has  suffered ;  and  yet — it  would  be 
wrong,  I  feel,  to  conceal  it  from  her.  If  she  takes  my 
advice,  she  will  not  answer  it.  Better  let  things  remain 
as  they  are.  To  write  one  line  would  be  to  upset  all.  For 
heaven's  sake,  don't  show  her  this  letter. 

"With  love  to  you  both  and  kind  regards  to  Her, 

Your  affectionate  brother, 
"W.  R." 

He  addressed  the  letter,  "Miss  Relf/  Hotel  du  Louvre, 
Marseilles,"  and  went  over  with  it  to  the  box  on  the  mantel- 
shelf, where  Hugh  Massinger's  letter  was  already  lying. 

When  Edie  Relf  received  that  letter  next  evening  at  the 
hotel  in  the  Rue  Cannebiere,  she  looked  at  it  once  and 
glanced  over  at  Elsie.  She  looked  at  it  twice  and  glanced 
over  at  Elsie.  She  looked  at  it  a  third  time — and  then,  with 
a  woman's  sudden  resolve,  she  did  exactly  what  Warren 
himself  had  told  her  not  to  do — she  handed  it  across  the 
table  to  Elsie. 

Hugh's  plot  trembled  indeed  in  the  balance  that  mo- 
ment; for  if  only  Elsie  wrote  to  Winifred,  ignoring  of 
course  his  last  forged  letter,  then  lying  on  the  hall  table  at 
Whitestrand,  all  would  have  been  up  with  him.  His  lie 
would  have  come  home  to  him  straight  as  a  lie.  The  two 
letters  would  in  all  probability  not  have  coincided.  Wini- 
fred would  have  known  him  from  that  day  forth  for  just 
what  he  was — a  liar — and  a  forger. 

And  yet  if,  by  that  simple  and  natural  coincidence,  Elsie 
had  sent  a  letter  from  Marseilles  merely  assuring  Winifred 
of  her  safety  and  answering  the  advertisement,  it  would 
have  fallen  in  completely  with  Hugh's  plot,  and  rendered 
Winifred's  assurance  doubly  certain.  Elsie  had  sailed  to 
Australia  by  way  of  Marseilles,  then.  In  a  npvel,  that 
coincidence  would  surely  have  occurred.  In  real  life,  it 
might  easily  have  done  so,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  didn't; 
for  Elsie  read  the  letter  slowly  first,  and  then  the  adver- 
tisement. 

"Poor  fellow!"  she  said  as  she  passed  the  letter  back 
again  to  Edie.  "It  was  very  kind  of  him ;  and  he  did  quite 
right.— I  think  I  shall  take  his  advice,  after  all.— It's  ter- 


CLEARING  THE  DECKS.  189 

ribly  difficult  to  know  what  one  ought  to  do.  But  I  don't 
think  I  shall  write  to  Winifred." 

Not  for  herself.  She  could  bear  the  exposure,  if  it  was 
to  save  Winifred.  But  for  Winifred's  sake,  for  poor  dear 
Winifred's.  She  couldn't  deprive  her  of  her  new  lover. 

Ought  she  to  let  Winifred  marry  him?  What  trouble 
might  not  yet  be  in  store  for  Winifred? — No,  no.  Hugh 
would  surely  be  kinder  to  her.  He  had  sacrificed  one  lov- 
ing heart  for  her  sake;  he  was  not  likely  now  to  break 
another. 

How  little  we  all  can  judge  for  the  best.  It  would  have 
been  better  for  Elsie  and  better  for  Winifred,  if  Elsie  had 
done  as  Warren  Relf  did,  and  not  as  he  said — if  she  had 
written  the  truth,  and  the  whole  truth  at  once  to  Winifred, 
allowing  her  to  be  her  own  judge  in  the  matter.  But  Elsie 
had  not  the  heart  to  crush  Winifred's  dream;  and  very 
naturally.  No  one  can  blame  a  woman  for  refusing  to  act 
with  more  than  human  devotion  and  foresight. 

Hugh  Massinger  had  left  the  headquarters  of  Bohemia 
for  twenty  minutes  at  the  exact  moment  when  Warren 
Relf  entered  the  Cheyne  Row  Club.  He  had  gone  to  tele- 
graph his  respectful  condolences  to  Winifred  and  Mrs. 
Meysey  at  Invertanar  Castle,  on  their  sad  loss,  with  con- 
ventional politeness.  When  he  came  back,  he  found,  to 
his  surprise,  the  copy  of  the  "Times"  still  lying  open  on 
the  smoking-room  table;  but  Winifred's  advertisement 
was  cut  clean  out  of  the  Agony  Column  with  a  sharp  pen- 
knife. In  a  moment  he  said  to  himself,  aghast:  "Some 
enemy  hath  done  this  thing."  It  must  have  been  Relf! 
Nobody  else  in  the  club  knew  anything.  Such  espionage 
was  intolerable,  unendurable,  not  to  be  permitted.  For 
three  days  he  had  been  trembling  and  chafing  at  the  hor- 
rid fact  that  Relf  knew  all  and  might  denounce  and  ruin 
him.  That  alone  was  bad  enough.  But  that  Relf  should 
be  plotting  and  intriguing  against  him!  That  Relf  should 
use  his  sinister  knowledge  for  some  evil  end!  That  Relf 
should  go  spying  and  eavesdropping  and  squirming 
about  like  a  common  detective!  The  idea  was  fairly  past 
endurance.  Among  gentlemen  such  things  were  not  to 
be  permitted.  Hugh  Massinger  was  prepared  not  to 
permit  them. 


190  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

He  passed  a  day  and  night  of  inexpressible  annoyance. 
This  situation  was  getting  too  much  for  him.  He  was 
fighting  in  the  dark:  he  didn't  understand  Warren  Relf's 
silence.  If  the  fellow  meant  to  crush  him,  for  what  was  he 
waiting?  Hugh  could  not  hold  all  the  threads  in  his 
mind  together.  He  felt  as  though  Warren  Relf  was  going 
to  make,  not  only  the  Cheyne  Row  Club,  but  all  London 
altogether  too  hot  for  him.  To  have  drowned  Elsie,  to  be 
jilted  by  Winifred,  and  to  be  baffled  after  all  by  that  crea- 
ture Relf — this,  this  was  the  hideous  and  ignominious 
future  he  saw  looming  now  visibly  before  him! 

It  was  with  a  heavy  heart  that  next  evening  at  seven  he 
dropped  into  the  club  dining-room.  Would  Relf  be  there? 
he  wondered  silently.  And  if  so,  what  course  would  Relf 
adopt  toward  him?  Yes,  Relf  was  there,  at  a  corner 
table,  as  good  luck  would  have  it,  with  his  back  turned 
to  him  safely  as  he  entered ;  and  that  fellow  Potts,  the  other 
mudbank  artist — they  hung  their  wretched  daubs  of  flat 
Suffolk  seaboard  side  by  side  fraternally  on  the  walls  of 
the  Institute — was  dining  with  him  and  concocting  mis- 
chief, no  doubt,  for  the  house  of  Massinger.  Hugh  half 
determined  to  turn  and  flee :  then  all  that  was  manly  and 
genuine  within  him  revolted  at  once  against  that  last  dis- 
grace. He  would  not  run  from  this  creature  Relf.  He 
would  not  be  turned  out  of  his  own  club — he  was  a  mem- 
ber of  the  committee  and  a  founder  of  the  society.  He 
would  face  it  out  and  dine  in  spite  of  him. 

But  not  before  the  fellow's  very  eyes;  that  was  more 
than  in  his  present  perturbed  condition  Hugh  Massinger 
could  manage  to  stand.  He  skulked  quietly  round,  unseen 
by  Relf,  into  the  side  alcove — a  recess  cut  off  by  an  arched 
doorway — where  he  gave  his  order  in  a  very  low  voice  to 
Martin,  the  obsequious  waiter.  Martin  was  surprised 
at  so  much  reserve.  Mr.  Massinger,  he  was  generally  the 
very  freest  and  loudest-spoken  gentleman  in  the  whole 
houseful  of  'em.  He  always  talked,  he  did,  as  if  the  club 
and  the  kitchen  and  the  servants  all  belonged  to  him. 

From  the  alcove,  by  a  special  interposition  of  fate,  Hugh 
could  hear  distinctly  what  Relf  was  saying.  Strange — 
incredible— a  singular  stroke  of  luck:  he  had  indeed 
caught  the  man  in  the  very;  act  and  moment  of  conspiring. 


CLEARING  THE  DECKS.  191 

— They  were  talking  of  Elsie !  Their  conversation  came  to 
him  distinct,  though  low.  Unnatural  excitement  had 
quickened  his  senses  to  a  strange  degree.  He  heard  it  all 
— every  sound — every  syllable. 

"Then  you  promise,  Frank,  on  your  word  of  honor  as 
a  gentleman,  you'll  never  breathe  a  word  of  this  or  of  any 
part  of  Miss  Challoner's  affair  to  anybody  anywhere?" 

"My  dear  boy,  I  promise,  that's  enough. — I  see  the 
necessity  as  well  as  you  do. — So  you've  actually  got  the 
letter,  have  you?" 

"I've  got  the  letter.  If  you  like,  I'll  read  it  to  you.  It's 
here  in  my  pocket.  I  have  to  restore  it  by  the  time  Mr. 
Meysey  returns  to-morrow." 

Mr.  Meysey!  Restore  it!  Then,  for  all  his  plotting, 
Relf  didn't  know  that  Mr.  Meysey  was  dead,  and  that  his 
funeral  was  fixed  to  take  place  at  Whitestrand  on  Monday 
or  Tuesday ! 

There  was  a  short  pause.  What  letter?  he  wondered. 
Then  Relf  began  reading  in  a  low  tone:  "My  darling 
Winifred,  I  can  hardly  make  up  my  mind  to  write  you  this 
letter;  and  yet  I  must:  I  can  no  longer  avoid  it." 

Great  heavens,  it  was  his  own  forged  letter  to  Winifred! 
How  on  earth  had  it  ever  come  into  Relf's  possession! 

Plot,  plot — plot  and  counterplot!  Dirty,  underhand, 
hole-and-corner  spy-business!  Relf  had  wheedled  it  out 
of  the  Meyseys  somehow,  to  help  him  to  track  down  and 
confront  his  enemy !  Or  else  he  had  suborned  one  of  the 
Whitestrand  servants  to  steal  or  copy  their  master's  cor- 
respondence! 

He  heard  it  through  to  the  last  word,  "Ever  your  affec- 
tionate but  heart-broken  Elsie." 

What  were  they  going  to  say  next? — Nothing.  Potts 
just  drew  a  long  breath  of  surprise,  and  then  whistled 
shortly  and  curiously.  "The  man's  a  blackguard,  to  have 
broken  the  poor  girl's  heart,"  he  observed  at  last,  "let 
alone  this.  He's  a  blackguard,  Relf. — I'm  very  sorry  for 
her. — And  what's  become  of  Miss  Challoner  now,  if  it 
isn't  indiscreet  to  ask  the  question?" 

"Well,  Potts,  I've  only  taken  any  other  man  into 
my  confidence  at  all  in  this  matter,  because  you  knew  more 
than  half  already,  and  it  was  impossible,  without  telling 


192  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

you  the  other  half,  fully  to  make  you  feel  the  necessity  for 
keeping  the  strictest  silence  about  it.  I'd  rather  not  tell 
either  you  or  anybody  else  exactly  where  Miss  Challoner's 
gone  now.  But  at  the  present  moment,  if  you  want  to 
know  the  precise  truth,  I've  no  doubt  she's  at  Marseilles, 
on  her  way  abroad  to  a  further  destination  which  I  prefer 
on  her  account  not  to  mention.  More  than  that  it's  better 
not  to  say.  But  she  wishes  it  kept  a  profound  secret,  and 
she  intends  never  to  return  to  England.*' 

As  Hugh  Massinger  heard  those  words,  those  reassur- 
ing words,  a  sudden  sense  of  freedom  and  lightness  burst 
instantly  over  him  in  a  wild  rush  of  reaction.  Aha!  aha! 
poor  feeble  enemy!  Was  this  all?  Then  Relf  knew  really 
nothing!  That  mysterious  "Yes"  of  his  was  a  fraud,  a 
pretense,  a  mistake,  a  delusion!  He  was  all  wrong,  all 
wrong  and  in  error.  Instead  of  knowing  that  Elsie  was 
dead— dead  and  buried  in  her  nameless  grave  at  Orford- 
ness — he  fancied  she  was  still  alive  and  in  hiding!  The 
man  was  a  windbag.  To  think  he  should  have  been  ter- 
rified— he,  Hugh  Massinger — by  such  a  mere  empty 
boastful  eavesdropper! — Why,  Relf,  after  all,  was  himself 
deceived  by  the  forged  letters  he  had  so  cleverly  palmed 
off  upon  them.  The  special  information  he  pretended  to 
possess  was  only  the  special  information  derived  from 
Hugh  Massinger's  own  careful  and  admirable  forgeries. 
He  hugged  himself  in  a  perfect  transport  of  delight.  The 
load  was  lifted  as  if  by  magic  from  his  breast.  There  was 
nothing  on  earth  for  him,  after  all,  to  be  afraid  of! 

He  saw  it  all  at  a  glance  now. — Relf  was  in  league  with 
the  servants  at  the  Meyseys'.  Some  prying  lady's-maid 
or  dishonest  flunkey  must  have  sent  him  the  first  letter  to 
Winifred,  or  at  least  a  copy  of  it:  nay,  more;  he  or  she 
must  have  intercepted  the  second  one,  which  arrived  while 
Winifred  was  on  her  way  to  Scotland — else  how  could  Relf 
have  heard  this  last  newly  fledged  fiction  about  the  journey 
abroad — the  stoppage  at  Marseilles — the  determination 
never  to  return  to  England? — And  how  greedily  and 
eagerly  the  man  swallowed  it  all — his  nasty  second-hand 
servants'-hall  information !  Hugh  positively  despised  him 
in  his  own  mind  for  his  ready  credulity  and  his  mean  du- 
plicity. How  glibly  he  retailed  the  plausible  story,  with 


CLEARING  THE  DECKS.  193 

nods  and  hints  and  additions  of  his  own:  "At  the  present 
moment,  I've  no  doubt  she's  at  Marseilles,  on  her  way 
abroad  to  a  further  destination,  which  I  prefer  on  her 
account  not  to  mention."  What  airs  and  graces  and  what 
comic  importance  the  fellow  put  on,  on  the  strength  of 
his  familiarity  with  this  supposed  mystery!  Any  other 
man  with  a  straigthfonvard  mind  would  have  said  out- 
right plainly,  "to  Australia;"  but  this  pretentious  jacka- 
napes with  his  stolen  information  must  make  up  a  little 
mystification  all  of  his  own,  to  give  himself  importance 
in  the  eyes  of  his  greedy  gobemouche  of  a  companion. 
It  was  too  grotesque!  too  utterly  ridiculous!  And  this 
w-as  the  man  of  whom  he  had  been  so  afraid!  His  own 
dupe !  the  ready  fool  who  swallowed  at  second-hand  such 
idle  tattle  of  the  servants'  hall,  and  employed  an  under- 
strapper or  a  pretty  soubrette  to  open  other  people's  let- 
ters for  his  own  information!  From  that  moment  forth, 
Hugh  might  cordially  hate  him,  Hugh  might  freely  despise 
him ;  but  he  would  never,  never,  never  be  afraid  of  him. 

One  only  idea  left  some  slight  suspicion  of  uneasiness  on 
his  enlightened  mind.  He  hoped  the  lady's  maid — that  hy- 
pothetical lady's-maid — had  sent  on  the  forged  letter — after 
reading  it — to  Winifred.  Not  that  poor  Winifred  would 
have  time  to  think  much  about  Elsie  at  present,  in  the 
midst  of  this  sudden  and  unexpected  bereavement:  she 
would  be  too  full  of  her  own  dead  father,  no  doubt,  to  pay 
any  great  attention  to  her  governess'  misfortunes.  But 
still,  one  doesn't  like  one's  private  letters  to  be  so  vulgarly 
tampered  with.  And  the  worst  of  it  was,  he  could  hardly 
ask  her  whether  she  had  received  the  note  or  not.  He 
could  hardly  get  at  the  bottom  of  this  low  conspiracy.  It 
was  his  policy  now  to  let  sleeping  dogs  lie.  The  less 
said  about  Elsie  the  better. 

Yet  in  his  heart  he  despised  Warren  Relf  for  his  mean- 
ness. He  might  forge  himself:  nothing  low  or  ungentle- 
manly  or  degrading  in  forgery.  Dishonest,  if  you  like; 
dishonest,  not  vulgar.  But  to  open  other  people's  letters 
— pah! — the  disgusting  smallness  and  lowness  and  vul- 
garity of  it!  A  sort  of  under-footmannish  type  of  crimin- 
ality. Peccafortiter,  if  you  will,  of  course,  but  don't  be  a 
cad  and  a  disgrace  to  your  breeding. 


194  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

CHAPTER  XXII. 

HOLY  MATRIMONY. 

The  way  of  the  transgressor  went  easy  for  a  while  with 
Hugh  Massinger.  His  sands  ran  smoother  than  he  could 
himself  have  expected.  His  two  chief  bugbears  faded 
away  by  degrees  before  the  strong  light  of  facts  into  pure 
nonentity.  Relf  did  not  know  that  Elsie  Challoner  lay  dead 
and  buried  in  a  lonely  grave  at  Orfordness;  and  Winifred 
Meysey  was  not  left  a  ward  in  Chancery,  or  otherwise 
inconvenienced  and  strictly  tied  up  in  her  plans  for  marry- 
ing him.  On  the  contrary,  the  affairs  of  the  deceased  were 
arranged  exactly  as  Hugh  himself  would  have  wished 
them  to  be  ordered.  The  will  in  particular  was  a  perfect 
gem:  Hugh  could  have  thrown  his  arms  round  the  blame- 
less attorney  who  drew  it  up :  Mrs.  Meysey  appointed  sole 
executrix  and  guardian  of  the  infant;  the  estate  and  Hall 
bequeathed  absolutely  and  without  remainder  to  Winifred 
in  person;  a  life-interest  in  certain  specified  sums  only, 
as  arranged  by  settlement,  to  the  relict  herself;  and  the 
coast  all  clear  for  Hugh  Massinger.  Everything  had 
turned  out  for  the  best  The  late  Squire  had  chosen  the 
happiest  possible  moment  for  dying.  The  infant  and  the 
guardian  were  on  Hugh's  own  side.  There  need  be  no 
long  engagement,  no  tremulous  expectation  of  dead  men's 
shoes  now :  nor  would  Hugh  have  to  put  up  for  an  indefin- 
ite term  of  years  with  the  nuisance  of  a  father-in-law's 
perpetual  benevolent  interference  and  well-meant  dicta- 
tion. Even  the  settlements,  those  tough  documents,  would 
be  all  drawn  up  to  suit  his  own  digestion.  As  Hugh 
sat,  decorously  lugubrious,  in  the  dining-room  at  White- 
strand  with  Mr.  Heberden,  the  family  solicitor,  two  days 
after  the  funeral,  he  could  hardly  help  experiencing  a 
certain  subdued  sense  of  something  exceedingly  akin  to 
stifled  gratitude  in  his  own  soul  toward  that  defective 
breech-loader  which  had  relieved  him  at  once  of  so  many 
embarrassments,  and  made  him  practically  Lord  of  the 
Manor  of  Consumptum  per  Mare,  in  the  hundred  of  Dun- 


HOLY  MATRIMONY.  195 

• 

wich  and  county  of  Suffolk,  containing  by  admeasure- 
ment so  many  acres,  roods,  and  perches,  be  the  same 
more  or  less — and  mostly  less,  indeed,  as  the  years  pro- 
ceeded. 

But  for  that  slight  drawback,  Hugh  cared  as  yet  abso- 
lutely nothing.  One  only  trouble,  one  visible  kill-joy, 
darkened  his  view  from  the  Hall  windows.  Every  prin- 
cipal room  in  the  house  faced  due  south.  Wherever  he 
looked,  from  the  drawing-room  or  the  dining-room,  the 
library  or  the  vestibule,  the  boudoir  or  the  billiard-room, 
the  Whitestrand  poplar  rose  straight  and  sheer,  as  con- 
spicuous as  ever,  by  the  brink  of  the  Char,  where  sea  and 
stream  met  together  on  debatable  ground  in  angry  en- 
counter. Its  rugged  boles  formed  the  one  striking  and 
beautiful  object  in  the  whole  prospect  across  those  deso- 
late flats  of  sand  and  salt  marsh,  but  to  Hugh  Massinger 
that  ancient  tree  had  now  become  instinct  with  awe  and 
horror — a  visible  memorial  of  his  own  crime — for  it  was 
a  crime — and  of  poor  dead  Elsie  in  her  nameless  grave 
by  the  Low  Lighthouse.  He  grew  to  regard  it  as  Elsie's 
monument.  Day  after  day,  while  he  stopped  at  White- 
strand,  he  rose  up  in  the  morning  with  aching  brows  from 
his  sleepless  bed — for  how  could  he  sleep,  with  the  break- 
ers that  drowned  and  tossed  ashore  his  dear  dead  Elsie 
thundering  wild  songs  of  triumph  from  the  bar  in  his  ears? 
— and  gazed  out  of  his  window  over  the  dreary  outlook, 
to  see  that  accusing  tree  with  its  gnarled  roots  confronting 
him  ever,  full  in  face,  and  poisoning  his  success  with  its 
mute  witness  to  his  murdered  victim.  Every  time  he 
looked  out  upon  it,  he  heard  once  more  that  wild,  wild 
cry,  as  of  a  stricken  life,  when  Elsie  plunged  into  the 
careering  current.  Every  time  the  wind  shrieked  through 
its  creaking  branches  in  the  lonely  night,  the  shrieks  went 
to  his  heart  like  so  many  living  human  voices  crying  for 
sympathy.  He  hated  and  despised  himself  in  the  very 
midst  of  his  success.  He  had  sold  his  own  soul  for  a 
wasted  strip  of  swamp  and  marsh  and  brake  and  sandhill, 
and  he  found  in  the  end  that  it  profited  him  nothing. 

Still,  time  brings  alleviation  to  most  earthly  troubles. 
Even  remorse  grows  duller  with  age — till  the  day  comes 
for  it  to  burst  out  afresh  in  fuller  force  than  ever  and  goad 


196  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

its  victim  on  to  a  final  confession.  Days  and  weeks  and 
months  rolled  by,  and  Hugh  Massinger  by  slow  degrees 
began  to  feel  that  Othello  was  himself  again.  He  wrote, 
as  of  old,  his  brilliant  leaders  every  day  regularly  for  the 
"Morning  Telephone":  he  slashed  three-volume  novels 
with  as  much  vigor  as  ever,  and  rather  more  cynicism 
and  cruelty  than  before,  in  the  "Monday  Register:"  he 
touched  the  tender  stops  of  various  quills,  warbling  his 
Doric  lay  to  Ballade  and  Sonnet,  in  the  wonted  woods  of 
the  "Pimlico  Magazine"  with  endless  versatility.  Nor 
was  that  all.  He  played  high  in  the  evening  at  Palla- 
vicinfs,  more  recklessly  even  than  had  been  his  ancient 
use ;  for  was  not  his  future  now  assured  to  him  ?  and  did  not 
the  horrid  picture  of  his  dead  drowned  Elsie,  tossed  friend- 
less on  the  bare  beach  at  Orfordness,  haunt  him  and  sting 
him  with  its  perpetual  presence  to  seek  in  the  feverish  ex- 
citement of  roulette  some  momentary  forgetfulness  of  his 
life's  tragedy?  True,  his  rhymes  were  sadder  and 
gloomier  now  than  of  old,  and  his  play  wilder :  no  more  of 
the  rollicking,  humorous,  happy-go-lucky  ballad-mon- 
gering  that  alternated  in  the  "Echoes  from  Callimachus" 
with  his  more  serious  verses:  his  sincerest  laughter,  he 
knew  himself,  with  some  pain  was  fraught,  since  Elsie 
left  him.  But  in  their  lieu  had  come  a  reckless  abandon- 
ment that  served  very  well  at  first  sight  instead  of  real 
mirth  or  heartfelt  geniality.  In  the  olden  days,  Hugh  had 
always  cultivated  a  certain  casual  vein  of  cheerful  pessi- 
mism :  he  had  posed  as  the  man  who  drags  the  lengthen- 
ing chain  of  life  behind  him  good-humoredly :  now,  a 
grim  sardonic  smile  usurped  the  place  of  his  pessimistic 
bonhomie,  and  filled  his  pages  with  a  Carlylese  gloom  that 
\vas  utterly  alien  to  his  true  inborn  nature.  Even  his  light- 
er work  showed  traces  of  the  change.  His  wayward  arti- 
cle, "Is  Death  Worth  Dying?"  in  the  "Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury," was  full  of  bitterness;  and  his  clever  skit  on  the 
Blood-and-Thunder  school  of  fiction,  entitled  "The  Zulu- 
Had,"  and  published  as  a  Christmas  "shilling  shocker," 
had  a  sting  and  a  venom  in  it  that  were  wholly  wanting 
to  his  earlier  performances  in  the  same  direction.  The 
critics  said  Massinger  was  suffering  from  a  shallow  spasm 
of  Byronic  affectation.  He  knew  himself  he  was  really 


HOLY  MATRIMONT.  197 

suffering  from  a  profound  fit  of  utter  self-contempt  and 
wild  despairing  carelessness  of  consequence. 

The  world  moves,  however,  as  Galileo  remarked,  in  spite 
of  our  sorrows.  Three  months  after  Wyville  Meysey's 
death,  Whitestrand  received  its  new  master.  It  was 
strange  to  find  any  but  Meyseys  at  the  Hall,  for  Meyseys 
had  dwelt  there  from  time  immemorial;  the  first  of  the 
bankers,  even,  though  of  a  younger  branch,  having  pur- 
chased the  estate  with  his  newly-gotten  gold  from  an 
elder  and  ruined  representative  of,  the  main  stock.  The 
wedding  was  a  very  quiet  affair,  of  course:  half-mourn- 
ing at  best,  with  no  show  or  tomfoolery;  and  what  was 
of  much  more  importance  to  Hugh,  the  arrangements  for 
the  settlements  were  most  satisfactory.  The  family  solicit- 
or wasn't  such  a  fool  as  to  make  things  unpleasant  for  his 
new  client.  Winifred  was  a  nice  little  body  in  her  way, 
too;  affectionately  proud  of  her  captive  poet:  and  from 
a  lordly  height  of  marital  superiority,  Hugh  rather  liked 
the  pink  and  white  small  woman  than  otherwise.  But  he 
didn't  mean  to  live  much  at  Whitestrand  either — "At  least 
while  your  mother  lasts,  my  child,"  he  said  cautiously  to 
Winifred,  letting  her  down  gently  by  gradual  stages,  and 
saving  his  own  reputation  for  kindly  consideration  at  the 
same  moment.  "The  good  old  soul  would  naturally  like 
still  to  feel  herself  mistress  in  her  own  house.  It  would 
be  cruel  to  mother-in-law  to  disturb  her  now.  Whenever 
we  come  down,  we'll  come  down  strictly  on  a  visit  to  her. 
But  for  ourselves,  we'll  nest  for  the  present  in  London." 

Nesting  in  London  suited  Winifred,  for  her  part,  ex- 
cellently well.  In 'poor  papa's  day,  indeed,  the  Meyseys 
had  felt  themselves  of  late  far  too  deeply  impoverished — 
since  the  sandhills  swallowed  up  the  Yondstream  farms — 
even  to  go  up  to  town  in  a  hired  house  for  a  few  weeks 
or  so  in  the  height  of  the  season,  as  they  had  once  been 
wont  to  do,  during  the  golden  age  of  the  agricultural 
interest.  The  struggle  to  keep  up  appearances  in  the  old 
home  on  a  reduced  income  had  occupied  to  the  full  their 
utmost  energies  during  these  latter  days  of  universal  de- 
pression. So  London  wras  to  Winifred  a  practically  al- 
most unknown  world,  rich  in  potentialities  of  varied 
enjoyment.  She  had  been  there  but  seldom,  on  a  visit 


THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 


to  friends;  and  she  knew  nothing  as  yet  of  that  brilli»vit 
circle  that  gathers  round  Mrs.  Bouverie  Barton's  Wednes- 
day evenings,  where  Hugh  Massinger  was  able  to  intro- 
duce her  with  distinction  and  credit.  True,  the  young 
couple  began  life  on  a  small  scale,  in  a  quiet  little  house — 
most  aesthetically  decorated  on  economical  principles — 
down  a  side-street  in  the  remote  recesses  of  Philistine 
Bayswater.  But  Hugh's  coterie,  though  unsuccessful, 
was  nevertheless  ex  officio  distinguished:  he  was  hand- 
in-glove  with  the  whole  Cheyne  Row  set — the  Royal 
Academicians  still  in  embryo;  the  Bishops  Designate  of 
fate  wrho  at  present  held  suburban  curacies;  the  Cabinet 
Ministers  whose  budget  yet  lingered  in  domestic  arrears ; 
the  germinating  judges  whose  chances  of  the  ermine  were 
confined  in  near  perspective  to  soup  at  sessions,  or  the 
smallest  of  small  devilling  for  rising  juniors.  They  were 
not  rich  in  this  world's  goods,  those  discounted  celebrities ; 
but  they  were  a  lively  crew,  full  of  fun  and  fancy,  and  they 
delighted  Winifred  by  their  juvenile  exuberance  of  wit 
and  eloquence.  She  voted  the  men  with  their  wives,  when 
-  they  had  any — which  wasn't  often,  for  Bohemia  can  sel- 
dom afford  the  luxury  of  matrimony — the  most  charming 
society  she  had  ever  met;  and  Bohemia  in  return  voted 
"little  Mrs.  Massinger,"  in  the  words  of  its  accepted 
mouthpiece  and  spokesman,  Hatherley,  "as  witty  a  piece  of 
Eve's  flesh  as  any  in  Illyria."  The'  little  "arrangement 
in  pink  and  white"  became,  indeed,  quite  a  noted  person- 
age in  the  narrow  world  of  Cheyne  Row  society. 

To  say  the  truth,  Hugh  detested  Whitestrand.  He 
never  wanted  to  go  near  the  place  again,  now  that  he 
had  made  himself  in  very  deed  its  lord  and  master.  He 
hated  the  house,  the  grounds,  the  river;  but  above  all  he 
hated  that  funereal  poplar  that  seemed  to  rise  up  and  men- 
ace him  each  time  he  looked  at  it  with  the  pains  and  penal- 
ties of  his  own  evil  conscience.  At  Easter,  Winifred 
dragged  him  home  once  more,  to  visit  the  relict  in  her 
lonely  mansion.  The  Bard  went,  as  in  duty  bound;  but 
the  duty  was  more  than  commonly  distasteful.  They 
reached  Whitestrand  late  at  night,  and  were  shown  upstairs 
it  once  into  a  large  front  bedroom.  Hugh's  heart  leaped 
up  in  his  mouth  when  he  saw  it.  It  was  Elsie's  room; 


HOLY  MATRIMONY.  199 

the  room  into  which  he  had  climbed  on  that  fateful  even- 
ing; the  room  bound  closest  up  in  his  memory  with  the 
hideous  abiding  nightmare  of  his  poisoned  life ;  the  room 
he  had  never  since  dared  to  enter;  the  room  he  had  hoped 
never  more  to  look  upon. 

"Are  we  to  sleep  here,  Winnie?"  he  cried  aghast,  in  a 
tone  of  the  utmost  horror  and  dismay.  And  Winifred, 
looking  up  at  him  in  silent  surprise,  answered  merely  in 
an  unconcerned  voice:  "Why,  yes,  my  dear  boy;  what's 
wrong  with  the  room?  It's  good  enough.  We're  to 
sleep  here,  of  course — certainly." 

He  dared  say  no  more.  To  remonstrate  would  be  mad- 
ness. Any  reason  he  gave  must  seem  inadequate.  But 
he  would  sooner  have  slept  on  the  bare  ground  by  the 
river-side  than  have  slept  that  night  in  that  desecrated  and 
haunted  room  of  Elsie's. 

He  did  not  sleep.  He  lay  awake  all  the  long  hours 
through,  and  murmured  to  himself,  ten  thousand  times 
over,  "Elsie,  Elsie,  Elsie,  Elsie!"  His  lips  moved  as  he 
murmured  sometimes.  Winifred  opened  her  eyes  once — 
he  felt  her  open  them,  though  it  was  as  dark  as  pitch — 
and  seemed  to  listen.  One's  senses  grow  preternaturally 
sharp  in  the  night  watches.  Could  she  have  heard  that 
mute  movement  of  his  silent  lips?  He  hoped  not.  Oh 
no;  it  was  impossible.  But  he  lay  awake  till  morning 
in  a  deadly  terror,  the  cold  sweat  standing  in  big  drops 
on  his  brow,  haunted  through  the  long  vigils  of  the  dreary 
night  by  that  picture  of  Elsie,  in  her  pale  white  dress,  with 
arms  uplifted  above  her  helpless  head,  flinging  herself 
wildly  from  the  dim  black  poplar,  through  the  gloom  of 
evening,  upon  the  tender  mercies  of  the  swift  dark  water. 

Elsie,  Elsie,  Elsie,  Elsie!  It  was  for  this  he  had  sold 
and  betrayed  his  Elsie! 

In  the  morning  when  he  rose,  he  went  over  to  the  win- 
dow— Elsie's  window,  round  whose  sides  the  rich  wistaria 
clambered  so  luxuriantly — and  looked  out  with  weary 
sleepless  eyes  across  the  weary  dreary  stretch  of  barren 
Suffolk  scenery.  It  was  still  winter,  and  the  wistaria  on 
the  wall  stood  bald  and  naked  and  bare  of  foliage.  How 
different  from  the  time  when  Elsie  lived  there!  He  could 
see  where  the  bough  had  broken  with  his  weight  that  awful 


200  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

night  of  Elsie's  disappearance.  He  gazed  vacantly  across 
the  lawn  and  meadow  toward  the  tumbling  sandhills. 
"Winifred,"  he  said — he  was  in  no  mood  just  then  to  call 
her  Winnie — "what  a  big  bare  bundle  of  straight  tall 
switches  that  poplar  is!  So  gaunt  and  stiff!  I  hate  the 
very  sight  of  it.  It's  a  great  disfigurement.  I  wonder 
your  people  ever  stood  it  so  long,  blocking  out  the  view 
from  their  drawing-room  windows.'.' 

Winifred  rose  from  the  dressing-table  and  looked  out 
by  his  side  in  blank  surprise.  "Why,  Hugh,"  she  cried, 
noting  both  his  unwonted  tone  and  the  absence  of  his 
now  customary  pet  form  of  her  name,  "howr  can  you 
say  so?  I  call  it  just  lovely.  Blocking  out  the  view, 
indeed!  Why,  it  is  the  view.  There's  nothing  else.  It's 
the  only  good  point  in  the  whole  picture.  I  love  to  see 
it  even  in  winter — the  dear  old  poplar — so  tall  and  straight 
— with  its  twigs  etched  out  in  black  and  gray  against  the 
sky  like  that.  I  love  it  better  than  anything  else  at  White- 
strand." 

Hugh  drummed  his  fingers  on  the  frosted  pane  impa- 
tiently. "For  my  part,  I  hate  it,"  he  answered  in  a  short 
but  sullen  tone.  "Whenever  I  come  to  live  at  White- 
strand,  I  shall  never  rest  till  I've  cut  it  down  and  stubbed 
it  up  from  the  roots  entirely/' 

"Hugh!" 

There  was  something  in  the  accent  that  made  him  start. 
He  knew  why.  It  reminded  him  of  Elsie's  voice  as  she 
cried  aloud  "Hugh!"  in  her  horror  and  agony  upon  that 
fateful  evening  by  the  grim  old  poplar. 

"Well,  Winnie,"  he  answered  much  more  tenderly.  The 
tone  had  melted  him. 

Winifred  flung  her  arms  around  him  with  every  sign  of 
grief  and  dismay  and  burst  into  a  sudden  flood  of  tears. 
"Oh,  Hugh,"  she  cried,  "you  don't  know  what  you  say: 
you  can't  think  how  you  grieve  me. — Don't  you  know 
why?  You  must  surely  guess  it. — It  isn't  that  the  White- 
strand  poplar's  a  famous  tree — a  seamark  for  sailors — a 
landmark  for  all  the  country  round — historical  almost,  not 
to  say  celebrated !  It  isn't  that  it  was  mentioned  by  Fuller 
and  Drayton,  and  I'm  sure  I  don't  know  how  many  other 
famous  people — poor  papa  knew,  and  was  fond  of  quoting 


UNDER  THE  PALM  TREES.  201 

them.  It's  not  for  all  that,  though  for  that  alone  I  should 
be  sorry  to  lose  it,  sorrier  than  for  anything  else  in  all 
Whitestrand.  But,  oh,  Hugh,  that  you  should  say  so! 
That  you  should  say,  Tor  my  part,  I  hate  it.' — Why, 
Hugh,  it  was  on  the  roots  of  that  very  tree,  you  know, 
that  you  saw  me  for  the  very  first  time  in  my  life,  as  I 
sat  there  dangling  my  hat — with  Elsie.  It  was  from  the 
roots  of  that  tree  that  I  first  saw  you  and  fell  in  love  with 
you,  when  you  jumped  off  Mr.  Relf's  yawl  to  rescue  my 
poor  little  half-crown  hat  for  me. — It  was  from  there  you 
first  won  my  heart — you  won  my  heart — my  poor  little 
heart. — And  to  think  you  really  want  to  cut  down  that 
tree  would  nearly,  very  nearly  break  it. — Hugh,  dear 
Hugh,  never,  never,  never  say  so !" 

No  man  can  see  a  woman  cry  unmoved.  To  do  so  is 
more  or  less  than  human.  Hugh  laid  her  head  tenderly 
on  his  big  shoulder,  soothed  and  kissed  her  with  loving 
gentleness,  swore  he  was  speaking  without  due  thought 
or  reflection,  declared  that  he  loved  that  tree  every  bit 
as  much  in  his  heart  as  she  herself  did,  and  pacified  her 
gradually  by  every  means  in  his  large  repertory  of  mascu- 
line blandishments.  But  deep  down  in  his  bosom,  he 
crushed  his  despair.  If  ever  he  came  to  live  at  White- 
strand,  then,  that  hateful  tree  must  ever  rise  up  in  mute 
accusation  to  bear  witness  against  him ! 

It  could  not!  It  should  not!  He  could  never  stand  it 
Either  they  must  never  live  at  Whitestrand  at  all,  or  else — 
or  else,  in  some  way  unknown  to  Winifred,  he  must  man- 
age to  do  away  with  the  Whitestrand  poplar. 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

UNDER  THE  PALM-TREES. 

A  lone  governess,  even  though  she  be  a  Girton  girl,  van- 
ishes readily  into  space  from  the  stage  of  society.  It's 
wonderful  how  very  little  she's  missed.  She  comes  and 
goes  and  disappears  into  vacancy,  almost  as  the  cook  and 
the  housemaid  do  in  our  modern  domestic  phantasma- 
goria; and  after  a  few  months,  everybody;  ceases  even 


202  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

to  inquire  what  has  become  of  her.  Our  round  horizon 
knows  her  no  more.  If  ever  at  rare  intervals  she  hap- 
pens to  flit  for  a  moment  across  our  zenith  again,  it  is  but 
as  a  revenant  from  some  distant  sphere.  She  has  played 
her  part  in  life,  so  far  as  we  are  concerned,  when  she  has 
"finished  the  education"  of  our  growing  girls,  as  we  cheer- 
fully phrase  it — what  a  happy  idea  that  anybody's  educa- 
tion could  ever  be  finished! — and  we  let  her  drop  out 
altogether  from  our  scheme  of  things  accordingly,  or  feel 
her,  when  she  invades  our  orbit  once  more,  as  inconvenient 
as  all  other  revenants  proverbially  find  themselves. 
Hence,  it  was  no  great  wonder  indeed  that  Elsie  Challoner 
should  subside  quietly  into  the  peaceful  routine  of  her 
new  residence  at  the  Villa  Rossa  at  San  Remo,  with  "no 
questions  asked,"  as  the  advertisements  frankly  and  in- 
genuously word  it.  She  had  a  few  girl-friends  in  Eng- 
land— old  Girton  companions — who  tracked  her  still  on 
her  path  through  the  cosmos,  and  to  these  she  wrote  un- 
reservedly as  to  her  present  whereabouts.  She  didn't  enter 
into  details,  of  course,  about  the  particular  way  she  came 
to  leave  her  last  temporary  home  at  the  Meyseys'  at  White- 
strand  :  no  one  is  bound  to  speak  out  everything ;  but  she 
said  in  plain  and  simple  language  she  had  accepted  a  new 
and  she  hoped  more  permanent  engagement  on  the 
Riviera.  That  was  all.  She  concealed  nothing  and  added 
nothing.  Her  mild  deception  was  purely  negative.  She 
had  no  wish  to  hide  the  fact  of  her  being  alive  from  any- 
body on  earth  but  Hugh  and  Winifred;  and  even  from 
them,  she  desired  to  hide  it  by  passive  rather  than  by  active 
concealment. 

But  it  is  an  error  of  youth  to  underestimate  in  the  long 
run  the  interosculation  of  society  in  our  modern  Babylon. 
You  may  lurk  and  languish  and  lie  obscure  for  a  while; 
but  you  do  not  permanently  evade  anybody:  you  may 
suffer  eclipse,  but  you  cannot  be  extinguished.  While 
we  are  young  and  foolish,  we  often  think  to  ourselves,  on 
some  change  in  our  environment,  that  Jones  or  Brown 
has  now  dropped  entirely  out  of  our  private  little  universe 
—that  we  may  safely  count  upon  never  again  happening 
upon  him  or  hearing  of  him  anyhow  or  anywhere.  We 
tell  Smith  something  we  know  or  suspect  about  Miss 


UNDER  THE  PALM  TREES.  203 

Robinson,  under  the  profound  but,  alas,  too  innocent  con- 
viction that  they  two  revolve  in  totally  different  planes  of 
life,  and  can  never  conceivably  collide  against  one  another. 
We  leave  Mauritius  or  Eagle  City,  Nebraska,  and  imagine 
we  are  quit  for  good  and  all  of  the  insignificant  Mauri- 
tians  or  the  free-born,   free-mannered  and   free-spoken 
citizens  of  that  far  western  mining  camp.     Error,  error, 
sheer  juvenile  error!     As  comets  come  back  in  time  from 
the  abysses  of  space,  so  everybody  always  turns  up  every- 
where.    Jones  and  Brown  run  up  against  us  incontinently 
on  the  King's  Road  at  Brighton ;  or  occupy  the  next  table 
to  our  own  at  Delmonico's;  or  clap  us  on  the  shoulder 
as  we  sit  with  a  blanket  wrapped  round  our  shivering 
forms,  intent  upon  the  too  wintry  sunrise  on  the  summit 
of  the  Rigi.     Miss  Robinson's  plane  bisects  Smith's  hori- 
zon at  right  angles  in  the  dahabeeyah  on  the  Upper  Nile, 
or  discovers  our  treachery  at  an  hotel  at  Orotava  in  the 
Canary  Islands.     Our  Mauritian  sugar-planter  calls  us 
over  the  coals  for  our  pernicious  views  on  differential 
duties  and  the  French  bounty  system  among  the  stormy 
channels  of  the  Outer  Hebrides;  and  Colonel  Bill  Man- 
ningham,  of  the  "Eagle  City  National  Examiner,"  in- 
trudes upon  the  quiet  of  our  suburban  villa  at  remote 
Surbiton  to  inquire,  with  Western  American  picturesque- 
ness  and  exuberance  of  vocabulary,  what  the  Hades  we 
meant  by  our  casual  description  of  Nebraskan  society  as 
a  den  of  thieves,  in  the  last  number  of  the  St.  Petersburg 
"Monitor?"     Oh    no;     in    the    pre-Columbian    days    of 
Boadicea,  and  Romulus  and  Remus,  and  the  Twenty-first 
Dynasty,  it  might  perhaps  have  been  possible  to  mention 
a  fact  at  Nineveh  or  Pekin  with  tolerable  security  against 
its  being  repeated  forthwith  in  the  palaces  of  Mexico  or 
the  huts  of  Honolulu;  but  in  our  existing  world  of  rail- 
ways and  telegraphs  and  penny  postage,  and  the  great 
ubiquitous  special  correspondent,  when  Morse  and  Wheat- 
stone  have  wreaked  their  worst,  and  whosoever  enters 
Jerusalem  by  the  Jaffa  Gate  sees  a  red-lettered  notice- 
board  staring  him  in  the  face,  "This  way  to  Cook's  Ex- 
cursion Office" — the  attempt  to  conceal  anything  has  be- 
come simply  and  purely  a  ridiculous  fallacy.     When  we 
go  to  Timbuctoo,  we  expect  to  meet  with  some  of  our 


204  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

wife's  relations  in  confidential  quarters;  and  we  are  not 
surprised  when  the  aged  chief  who  entertains  us  in  Pari- 
sian full  dress  at  an  eight  o'clock  dinner  in  the  Fiji  Islands 
relates  to  us  some  pleasing  Oxford  anecdotes  of  the  mis- 
sionary bishop  whom  in  unregenerate  days  he  assisted 
to  eat,  and  under  whom  we  ourselves  read  Aristotle  and 
Tacitus  as  undergraduates  at  dear  sleepy  old  Oriel.  More 
than  ever  nowadays  is  the  proverb  true,  "Quod  taciturn 
velis  nemini  dixeris." 

It  was  ordained,  therefore,  in  the  nature  of  things,  that 
sooner  or  later  Hugh  Massinger  must  find  out  Elsie  Chal- 
loner  was  really  living.  No  star  shoots  ever  beyond  the 
limits  of  our  galaxy.  But  the  discovery  might  be  post- 
poned for  an  indefinite  period ;  and  besides,  so  far  as  Elsie 
herself  was  concerned,  her  only  wish  was  to  keep  the  fact 
secret  from  Hugh  in  person,  not  from  the  rest  of  the 
world  at  large;  for  she  knew  everybody  else  in  her  little 
sphere  believed  her  merely  to  have  left  the  Meyseys'  in  a 
most  particular  and  unexplained  hurry.  Now,  Hugh  for 
his  part,  even  if  any  vague  rumor  of  her  having  been 
sighted  here  or  there  in  some  distant  nook  of  the  Riviera 
by  So-and-so  or  What's-his-name  might  happen  at  any 
time  to  reach  his  ear,  would  certainly  set  it  down  in  his 
own  heart  as  one  more  proof  of  the  signal  success  of  his 
own  clever  and  cunningly  designed  deception.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  more  than  one  person  did  accidentally,  in 
the  course  of  .conversation,  during  the  next  few  years 
mention  to  Hugh  that  somebody  had  said  Miss  Challoner 
had  been  seen  at  Marseilles  or  Cannes,  or  Genoa  or  some- 
where; and  Hugh  in  every  case  did  really  look  upon  it 
only  as  another  instance  of  Warren  Relf's  blind  acceptance 
of  his  bland  little  fictions.  The  more  people  thought  El- 
sie was  alive,  the  more  did  Hugh  Massinger  in  his  own 
heart  pride  himself  inwardly  on  the  cleverness  and  far- 
sightedness of  the  plot  he  had  laid  and  carried  out  that 
awful  evening  at  the  Fisherman's  Rest  at  Whitestrand  in 
Suffolk. 

Thus  it  happened  that  Elsie  was  not  far  wrong,  for  the 
present  at  least,  in  her  calculation  of  chances  as  to  Hugh 
and  Winifred. 

The  very  day  Elsie  reached  San  Remo,  news  of  Mr, 


UNDER  THE  PALM  TREES.  205 

Meysey's  death  came  to  her  in  the  papers.  It  was  a  sud- 
den shock,  and  the  temptation  to  write  to  Winifred  then 
was  very  strong;  but  Elsie  resisted  it.  She  had  to  resist 
it — to  crush  down  her  sympathy  for  sympathy's  sake. 
She  couldn't  bear  to  break  poor  Winifred's  heart  at  such 
a  moment  by  letting  her  know  to  the  full  all  Hugh's  base- 
ness. It  was  hard  indeed  that  Winifred  should  think  her 
unfeeling,  should  call  her  ungrateful,  should  suppose  her 
forgetful;  but  she  bore  even  that — for  Winifred's  sake — 
without  murmuring.  Some  day,  perhaps,  Winifred  would 
know;  but  she  hoped  not.  For  Winifred's  sake,  she 
hoped  Winifred  would  never  find  out  what  manner  of  man 
she  proposed  to  marry. 

And  for  Hugh's,  too.  For  with  feminine  consistency 
and  steadfastness  of  feeling,  Elsie  even  now  could  not 
learn  to  hate  him.  Nay,  rather,  though  she  recognized 
how  vile  and  despicable  a  thing  he  was,  how  poor  in  spirit, 
how  unworthy  of  her  love,  she  loved  him  still — she  could 
not  help  loving  him.  For  Hugh's  sake,  she  wished  it  all 
kept  secret  forever  from  Winifred,  even  though  she  herself 
must  be  the  victim  and  the  scapegoat.  Winifred  would 
think  harshly  of  her  in  any  case :  why  let  her  think  harshly 
of  Hugh  also? 

And  so,  in  the  little  Villa  Rossa  at  San  Remo,  among 
that  calm  reposeful  scenery  of  olive  groves  and  lemon 
orchards,  Elsie's  poor  wounded  heart  began  gradually  to 
film  over  a  little  with  external  healing.  She  had  the 
blessed  deadening  influence  of  daily  routine  to  keep  her 
from  brooding;  those  six  pleasant,  delicate,  sensitive,  sym- 
pathetic consumptive  girls  to  teach  and  look  after  and 
walk  out  with  perpetually.  They  were  bright  young  girls, 
as  often  happens  with  their  type ;  extremely  like  Winifred 
herself  in  manner — too  like,  Elsie  sometimes  thought  in 
her  own  heart  with  a  sigh  of  presentiment.  And  Elsie's 
heart  was  still  young,  too.  They  clambered  together, 
like  girls  as  they  were,  among  the  steep  hills  that  stretch 
behind  the  town;  they  explored  that  pretty  coquettish 
country;  they  wandered  along  the  beautiful  olive-clad 
shore ;  they  made  delightful  excursions  to  the  quaint  old 
villages  on  the  mountain  sides — Taggia  and  Ceriana,  and 
San  Romolo  and  Perinaldo — moldering  gray  houses 


206  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

perched  upon  pinnacles  of  mouldering  gray  rock,  and 
pierced  by  arcades  of  Moorish  gloom  and  medieval  sol- 
emnity. All  alike  helped  Elsie  to  beat  down  the  mem- 
ory of  her  grief,  or  to  hold  it  at  bay  in  her  poor  tortured 
bosom.  That  she  would  ever  be  happy  again  was  more 
than  in  her  most  sanguine  moments  she  dared  to  expect; 
but  she  was  not  without  hope  that  she  might  in  time  grow 
at  least  insensible. 

One  morning  in  December,  at  the  Villa  Rossa,  about 
the  hour  for  early  breakfast,  Elsie  heard  a  light  knock  at 
her  door.  It  was  not  the  cook  with  the  cafe-au-lait  arid 
roll  and  tiny  pat  of  butter  on  the  neat  small  tray  for  the 
first  breakfast:  Elsie  knew  that  much  by  the  lightness  of 
the  knock.  "Come  in,"  she  said;  and  the  door  opened 
and  Edie  entered.  She  held  a  letter  in  her  right  hand, 
and  a  very  grave  look  sat  upon  her  usually  merry  face. 
"Somebody  dead?"  Elsie  thought  with  a  start.  But  no; 
the  letter  was  not  black-bordered.  Edie  opened  it  and 
drew  from  it  slowly  a  small  piece  of  paper,  an  advertise- 
ment(from  the  "Times."  Then  Elsie's  breath  came  and 
went  hard.  She  knew  now  what  the  letter  portended. 
Not  a  death :  not  a  death — but  a  marriage ! 

"Give  it  me,  dear,"  she  cried  aloud  to  Edie.  "Let  me 
see  it  at  once.  I  can  bear  it — I  can  bear  it" 

Edie  handed  the  cutting  to  her,  with  a  kiss  on  her  fore- 
head, and  sat  with  her  arm  round  Elsie's  waist  as  the  poor 
dazed  girl,  half  erect  in  the  bed,  sat  up  and  read  that  final 
seal  of  Hugh's  cruel  betrayal:  "On  Dec.  i/th,  at  White- 
strand  Parish  Church,  Suffolk,  by  the  Rev.  Percy  W. 
Bickersteth,  M.  A.,  cousin  of  the  bride,  assisted  by  the 
Rev.  J.  Walpole,  vicar,  Hugh  Edward  de  Carteret  Mas- 
singer,  of  the  Inner  Temple,  Barrister-at-law,  to  Winifred 
Mary,  only  daughter  of  the  late  Thomas  Wyville  Meysey, 
of  Whitestrand  Hall,  J.  P." 

Elsie  gazed  at  the  cutting  long  and  sadly;  then  she 
murmured  at  last  in  a  pained  voice:  "And  he  thought  I 
was  dead!  He  thought  he  had  killed  me!" 

Edie's  fiery  indignation  could  restrain  itself  no  longer. 
"He's  a  wicked  man,"  she  cried:  "a  wicked,  bad,  horrible 
creature;  and  I  don't  care  what  you  say,  Elsie;  I  hope 


UNDER  THE  PALM  TREES.  207 

he'll  be  punished  as  he  well  deserves  for  his  cruelty  and 
wickedness  to  you,  darling." 

"I  hope  not — I  pray  not,"  Elsie  answered  solemnly. 
And  as  she  said  it,  she  meant  it.  She  prayed  for  it  pro- 
foundly. 

After  a  while,  she  set  down  the  paper  on  the  table  by 
her  bedside,  and  laying  her  head  on  Edie's  shoulder,  burst 
into  tears — a  torrent  of  relief  for  her  burdened  feelings. 
Edie  soothed  her  and  wept  with  her,  tenderly.  For  half 
an  hour  Elsie  cried  in  silence ;  then  she  rose  at  last,  dried 
her  eyes,  burned  the  little  slip  of  paper  from  the  "Times" 
resolutely,  and  said  to  Edie:  "Now  it's  all  over." 

"All  over?"  Edie  echoed  in  an  inquiring  voice. 

"Yes,  darling,  all  over,"  Elsie  answered  very  firmly. 
"I  shall  never,  never  cry  any  more  at  all  about  him.  He's 
Winifred's  now,  and  I  hope  he'll  be  good  to  her. — But, 
oh,  Edie,  I  did  once  love  him  so!" 

And  the  winter  wore  away  slowly  at  San  Remo.  Elsie 
had  crushed  down  her  love  firmly  in  her  heart  now — 
crushed  it  down  and  stifled  it  to  some  real  purpose.  She 
knew  Hugh  for  just  what  he  was;  she  recognized  his  cold- 
ness, his  cruelty,  his  little  care  for  her;  and  she  saw  no 
sign — as  how  should  she  see  it? — of  the  deadly  remorse 
that  gnawed  from  time  to  time  at  his  tortured  bosom. 
The  winter  wore  away,  and  Elsie  was  glad  of  it  Time 
was  making  her  regret  less  poignant. 

Early  in  February,  Edie  came  up  to  her  room  one  after- 
noon, when  the  six  consumptive  pupils  were  at  work  in 
the  schoolroom  below  with  the  old  Italian  music-master, 
under  Mrs.  Relf's  direction,  and  seating  herself,  girl-fash- 
ion, on  the  bed,  began  to  talk  about  her  brother  Warren. 

Edie  seldom  talked  of  Warren  to  Elsie:  she  had  even 
ostentatiously  avoided  the  subject  hitherto,  for  reasons  of 
her  own  which  will  be  instantly  obvious  to  the  meanest 
intelligence.  But  now,  by  a  sort  of  accident  or  design, 
she  mentioned  casually  something  about  how  he  had 
always  taken  them,  most  years,  for  so  many  nice  trips  in 
his  yawl  to  the  lovely  places  on  the  coast  about  Bordig- 
hera  and  Mentone,  and  even  Monte  Carlo. 

"Then  he  sometimes  comes  to  the  Riviera  with  you, 


208  THIS  MORTAL  COIL,. 

does  he?"  Elsie  asked  listlessly.  She  loved  Edie  and 
dear  old  Mrs.  Relf,  and  she  was  grateful  to  Warren  for 
his  chivalrous  kindness;  but  she  could  hardly  pretend 
to  feel  profoundly  interested  in  him.  There  had  never 
been  more  than  one  man  in  the  world  for  her,  and  that 
man  was  now  Winifred's  husband. 

"He  always  comes,"  Edie  answered,  with  a  significant 
stress  on  the  word  always.  "Indeed,  this  is  the  very  first 
year  he's  ever  missed  coming  since  we  first  wintered  here. 
He  likes  to  be  near  us  while  we're  on  the  coast.  It  gives 
him  a  chance  of  varying  his  subjects.  He  says  himself, 
he's  always  inclined  to  judge  of  genius  by  its  power  of 
breaking  out  in  a  fresh  place — not  always  repeating  its 
own  successes.  In  summer  he  sketches  round  the  mouth 
of  the  Thames  and  the  North  Sea,  but  in  winter  he  always 
alters  the  venue  to  the  Mediterranean.  Variety's  good 
for  a  painter,  he  thinks :  though,  to  be  sure,  that  doesn't 
really  matter  very  much  to  him,  because  nobody  ever  by 
any  chance  buys  his  pictures." 

"Can't  he  sell  them,  then?"  Elsie  asked  more  curiously. 

"My  dear,  Warren's  a  born  artist,  not  a  picture-dealer; 
therefore,  of  course,  he  never  sells  anything.  If  he  were 
a  mere  dauber,  now,  there  might  be  some  chance  for  him. 
Being  a  real  painter,  he  paints,  naturally  enough,  but  he 
makes  no  money." 

"But  the  real  painter  always  succeeds  in  the  end,  doesn't 
he?" 

"In  the  end,  yes;  I  don't  doubt  that:  within  a  century 
or  two.  But  what's  the  good  of  succeeding,  pray,  a  hun- 
dred years  after  you're  dead  and  buried?  The' bankers 
won't  discount  a  posthumous  celebrity  for  you.  I  should 
like  to  succeed  while  I  was  alive  to  enjoy  it.  I'd  rather 
have  a  modest  competence  in  the  nineteenth  century  than 
the  principal  niche  in  the  Temple  of  Fame  in  the  middle 
of  the  twentieth.  Besides,  Warren  doesn't  want  to  suc- 
ceed at  all,  dear  boy — at  least,  not  much.  I  wish  to  good- 
ness he  did.  He  only  wants  to  paint  really  great  pictures." 

That's  the  same  thing,  isn't  it? — or  very  nearly." 

"Not  a  bit  of  it.  Quite  the  contrary  in  some  cases. 
Warrens  one  of  them.  He'll  never  succeed  while  he 
lives,  poor  child,  unless  his  amiable  sister  succeeds  in 


UNDER  THE  PALM  TREES.  209 

making  him.  And  that's  just  what  I  mean  to  do  in  time, 
too,  dear. — I  mean  to  make  Warren  earn  enough  to  keep 
himself — and  a  wife  and  family." 

Elsie  looked  down  at  the  carpet  uneasily.  It  wanted 
darning.  "Why  didn't  he  come  this  winter  as  usual?" 
she  asked  in  haste,  to  turn  the  current  of  the  conversation. 

"Why?  Well,  why.  What  a  question  to  ask! — Just 
because  you  were  here,  Elsie." 

Elsie  examined  the  holes  in  the  Persian  pattern  on  the 
floor  by  her  side  with  minuter  care  and  precision  than 
ever.  "That  was  very  kind  of  him,"  she  said  after  a 
pause,  defining  one  of  them  with  the  point  of  her  shoe 
accurately. 

"Too  kind,"  Edie  echoed — "too  kind,  and  too  sensitive." 

"I  think  not,"  Elsie  murmured  low.  She  was  blushing 
visibly,  and  the  carpet  was  engrossing  all  her  attention. 

"And  I  think  yes,"  Edie  answered  in  a  decisive  tone. 
"And  when  I  think  yes,  other  people  ought  as  a  matter  of 
course  to  agree  with  me.  There's  such  a  thing  as  being 
too  generous,  too  delicate,  too  considerate,  too  thoughtful 
for  others.  You've  no  right  to  swamp  your  own  individ- 
uality. And  I  say,  Warren  ought  to  have  brought  the 
yawl  round  <o  San  Remo  long  ago,  to  give  us  all  a  little 
diversion,  and  not  gone  skulking  like  a  pickpocket  about 
Nice  and  Golfe  Jouan,  and  Toulon  and  St.  Tropez,  for 
a  couple  of  months  together  at  a  stretch,  without  so 
much  as  ever  even  running  over  here  to  see  his  own 
mother  and  sister  in  their  winter-quarters.  It's  not  re- 
spectful to  his  own  relations." 

Elsie  started.  "Do  you  mean  to  say,"  she  cried,  "he's 
been  as  near  as  Nice  without  coming  to  see  you?" 

Edie  nodded.     "Ever  since  Christmas." 

"No!     Not  really?" 

"Yes,  my  child.  Really,  or  I  wouldn't  say  so.  It's  a 
practice  of  mine  to  tell  the  truth  and  shame  a  certain 
individual.  Warren  couldn't  stop  away  from  us  any 
longer;  so  he  took  the  yawl  round  by  Gibraltar  after — 
after  the  I7th  of  December,  you  know." — Elsie  smiled 
sadly. — "And  he's  been  knocking  about  along  the  coast 
round  here  ever  since,  afraid  to  come  on — for  fear  of  hurt- 
ing your  feelings,  Elsie." 


210  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

Elsie  rose  and  clasped  her  hands  tight.  "It  was  very 
kind  of  him,"  she  said.  "He's  a  dear  good  fellow.— I 
think  I  could  bear  to  meet  him  now.  And  in  any  case, 
I  think  he  ought  at  least  to  come  over  and  see  you  and 
your  mother.  It  would  be  very  selfish  of  me,  very  wrong 
of  me  to  keep  you  all  out  of  so  much  pleasure. — Ask 
him  to  come,  Edie. — Tell  him— it  would  not  hurt  me  very 
much  to  see  him." 

Edie's  eyes  flashed  mischievous  fire.  "That's  a  pretty 
sort  of  message  to  send  any  one,"  she  cried,  with  some 
slight  amusement.  "We  usually  put  it  in  a  politer  form. 
May  I  vary  it  a  little  and  tell  him,  Elsie,  it  will  give  you 
great  pleasure  to  see  him?" 

"If  you  like,"  Elsie  answered,  quite  simply  and  candid- 
ly. He  was  a  nice  fellow,  and  he  was  Edie's  brother. 
She  must  grow  accustomed  to  meeting  him  somehow. 
No  man  was  anything  at  all  to  her  now. — And  perhaps 
by  this  time  he  had  quite  forgotten  his  foolish  fancy. 

The  celebrated  centerboard  yawl  "Mud-Turtle,"  of  the 
port  of  London,  Relf,  master,  seventeen  tons  registered 
burden,  was  at  that  moment  lying  up  snugly  by  a  wooden 
pier  in  the  quaint  little  French  harbor  of  St.  Tropez,  just 
beyond  the  blue  peaks  of  the  frontier  mountains.  When 
Potts  next  morning  early  brought  a  letter  on  board,  ad- 
dressed to  the  skipper,  with  an  Italian  stamp  duly  stuck 
in  the  corner,  Warren  Relf  opened  it  hastily  with  doubtful 
expectations.  Its  contents  made  his  honest  brown  cheek 
burn  bright  red.  "My  dear  old  Warren,"  the  communica- 
tion ran  shortly,  "you  may  bring  the  yawl  round  here  to 
San  Remo  as  soon  as  you  like.  She  says  you  may  come ; 
and  what's  more,  she  authorizes  me  to  inform  you  in  the 
politest  terms  that  it  will  give  her  very  great  pleasure  in- 
deed to  see  you.  So  you  can  easily  imagine  the  pride  and 
delight  with  which  I  am  ever,  Your  affectionate  and  suc- 
cessful sister,  Edie." 

"Edie's  a  brick!"  Warren  said  to  himself  with  a  bound 
of  his  heart;  "and  it's  really  awfully  kind  of — Elsie." 

Before  ten  o'clock  that  same  morning,  the  celebrated 
centerboard  yawl  "Mud-Turtle,"  manned  by  her  owner 


THE  BALAKCE  QUIVERS.  211 

and  his  constant  companion,  was  under  way  with  a  favor- 
ing wind,  and  scudding  like  a  seabird,  with  all  canvas  on, 
round  the  spit  of  Bordighera,  on  her  voyage  to  the  tiny 
harbor  of  San  Remo. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 
THE  BALANCE  QUIVERS. 

March,  April,  May  passed  away :  anemones  and  asphodels 
came  and  went;  narcissus  and  globeflower  bloomed  and 
withered;  and  Warren  Relf,  cruising  about  in  the  "Mud- 
Turtle"  round  the  peacock-blue  bays  and  indentations 
of  the  Genoese  Riviera,  had  spent  many  cloudless  days 
in  quiet  happiness  at  the  pretty  little  villa  among  the 
clambering  olive  terraces  on  the  slopes  at  San  Remo. 
Elsie  had  learned  at  least  to  tolerate  his  presence  now: 
she  no  longer  blushed  a  vivid  crimson  when  she  saw  him 
coming  up  the  zigzag  roadway;  she  wasn't  much  more 
awkward  before  him,  in  fact,  than  with  other  creatures  of 
his  sex  in  general ;  nay,  more,  as  a  mere  friend  she  rather 
liked  and  enjoyed  his  society  than  otherwise.  Not  to  have 
liked  Warren  Relf,  indeed,  would  have  been  quite  un- 
pardonable. The  Relfs  had  all  shown  her  so  much  kind- 
ness, and  Warren  himself  had  been  so  chivalrously  cour- 
teous, that  even  a  heart  of  stone  might  surely  have  melted 
somewhat  toward  the  manly  young  painter.  And  Elsie's 
heart,  in  spite  of  Hugh's  unkindness,  was  by  no  means 
stony.  She  found  Warren,  in  his  rough  sailor  clothes, 
always  gentle,  always  unobtrusive,  always  thoughtful,  al- 
ways considerate;  and  as  Edie's  brother,  she  got  on  with 
him  quite  as  comfortably  in  the  long  run  as  could  be  ex- 
pected of  anybody  under  such  trying  circumstances. 

At  first,  to  be  sure,  she  couldn't  be  induced  to  board  the 
deck  of  the  busy  little  "Mud-Turtle."  But  as  May  came 
round  with  its  warm  Italian  sunshine,  Edie  so  absolutely 


212  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

insisted  on  her  taking  a  trip  with  them  along  that  en- 
chanted coast  toward  Monaco  and  Villefranche,  beneath 
the  ramping  crags  of  the  Tete  du  Chien,  that  Elsie  at  last 
gave  way  in  silence,  and  accompanied  them  round  the 
bays  and' headlands  and  roadsteads  of  the  Riviera  on  more 
than  one  delightful  outing.  Edie  was  beginning,  by  her 
simple  domestic  faith  in  her  brother's  profound  artistic 
powers,  to  inspire  Elsie,  too,  with  a  new  sort  of  interest  in 
Warren's  future.  It  began  to  dawn  upon  her  slowly,  in 
a  dim  chaotic  fashion,  that  Warren  had  really  a  most  un- 
usual love  for  the  byways  of  nature,  and  a  singular  faculty 
for  reading  and  interpreting  with  loving  skill  her  hidden 
hieroglyphics.  "My  dear/'  Edie  said  to  her  once,  as 
they  sat  on  deck  and  watched  Warren  laboring  with  cease- 
less care  at  the  minute  gro\vth  of  a  spreading  stain  on  a 
bare  wall  of  seaward  rock,  "he  shall  succeed — he  must 
succeed!  I  mean  to  make  him.  He  shall  be  hung.  A 
man  who  can  turn  out  work  like  that  must  secure  in  the 
end  his  recognition." 

"I  don't  want  recognition,"  Warren  answered  slowly, 
putting  a  few  more  lingering  microscopic  touches  to  the 
wee  curved  frondlets  of  the  creeping  lichen.  "I  do  it 
because  I  like  to  do  it.  The  w-ork  itself  is  its  own  reward. 
If  only  I  could  earn  enough  to  save  you  and  the  dear  old 
Mater  from  having  to  toil  and  moil  like  a  pair  of  galley- 
slaves,  Edie,  I  should  be  amply  satisfied,  and  more  than 
satisfied. — I  confess,  I  should  like  to  do  that,  of  course. 
In  art,  as  elsewhere,  the  laborer  is  worthy  of  his  hire,  no 
doubt :  he  would  prefer  to  earn  his  own  bread  and  butter. 
It's  hard  to  work  and  work,  and  work  and  work,  and  get 
scarcely  any  sale -after  all  for  one's  pictures." 

"It'll  come  in  time,"  Edie  answered,  nodding  sagacious- 
ly. "People  will  find  out  they're  compelled  at  last  to 
recognize  your  genius.  And  that's  the  best  success  of  all. 
in  the  long  run — the  success  that  comes  without  one's  ever 
seeking  it.  The  men  who  aim  at  succeeding,  succeed  for 
a  day.  The  men  who  work  at  their  art  for  their  art's 
sake,  and  leave  success  to  mind  its  own  business,  are  the 
men  who  finally  live  for  ever." 

"It  doesn't  do  them  much  good,  though,  I'm  afraid," 
Warren  answered,  with  a  sigh,  hardly  looking  up  from  his 


THE  BALANCE  QUIVERS.  213 

fragments  of  orange-brown  vegetation.  "They  seldom 
live  to  see  their  final  triumph. 

'For  praise  is  his  who  builds  for  his  own  age; 

But  he  that  builds  for  time,  must  look  to  time  for  wage!'  " 

As  he  said  it,  he  glanced  aside  nervously  at  Elsie.  What 
a  slip  of  the  tongue!  Without  remembering  for  a  mo- 
ment whom  he  was  quoting,  he  had  quoted  with  thought- 
less ease  a  familiar  couplet  from  the  "Echoes  from  Calli- 
machus." 

Elsie's  face  showed  no  passing  sign  of  recognition, 
however.  Perhaps  she  had  never  read  the  lines  he  was 
thinking  of;  perhaps,  if  not,  she  had  quite  forgotten  them. 
At  any  rate,  she  only  murmured  reflectively  to  Edie:  "I 
think,  with  you,  Mr.  Relf  must  succeed  in  the  end.  But 
how  soon,  it  would  be  difficult  to  say.  He'll  have  to  edu- 
cate his  public,  to  begin  with,  up  to  his  own  level.  When 
I  first  saw  his  work,  I  could  see  very  little  myself  to  praise 
in  it.  Now,  every  day,  I  see  more  and  more.  It's  like 
all  good  work ;  it  gains  upon  you  as  you  study  it  closely." 

Warren  turned  round  to  her  with  a  face  like  a  girl's. 
"Thank  you,"  he  said  gently,  and  no  more.  But  she 
could  see  that  her  praise  had  moved  him  to  the  core.  For 
two  or  three  minutes,  he  left  off  painting;  he  only  fum- 
bled with  a  dry  brush  at  the  outline  of  the  lichens,  and 
pretended  to  be  making  invisible  improvements  in  the 
petty  details  of  his  delicate  foreground.  She  observed 
that  his  hand  was  trembling  too  much  to  continue  work. 
After  a  short  pause  he  laid  down  his  palette  and  colors. 
"I  shall  leave  off  now,"  he  said,  "till  the  sun  gets  lower; 
it's  too  hot  just  at  present  to  paint  properly."  • 

Elsie  pitied  the  poor  young  man  from  the  bottom  of  her 
soul.  She  was  really  afraid  he  was  falling  in  love  with 
her.  And  if  only  he  knew  how  hopeless  that  would  be! 
She  had  a  heart  once ;  and  Hugh  had  broken  it 

That  evening,  in  the  sacred  recess  of  Elsie's  room,  Edie 
and  Elsie  talked  things  over  together  in  girlish  con- 
fidence. The  summer  was  coming  on  apace  now.  What 
was  Elsie  to  do  when  the  Relfs  returned,  as  they  must  re- 
turn, to  England? 


214  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

She  could  never  go  back.  That  was  a  fixed  point,  round 
which  as  pivot  the  rest  of  the  question  revolved  vaguely. 
She  could  never  expose  herself  to  the  bare  chance  of  meet- 
ing Hugh  and — and  Airs.  Massinger.  She  didn't  say  so, 
of  course;  no  need  to  say  it;  she  was  far  too  profoundly 
wounded  for  that.  But  Edie  and  she  both  took  it  for 
granted  in  perfect  silence.  They  understood  one  another, 
and  wanted  no  language  to  communicate  their  feelings. 

Suddenly,  Edie  had  a  bright  idea:  why  not  go  to  St. 
Martin  Lantosque? 

"Where's  St.  Martin  Lantosque?"  Elsie  asked  languidly. 
Her  own  future  was  not  a  subject  that  aroused  in  her 
mind  any  profound  or  enthusiastic  interest. 

"St.  Martin  Lantosque,  my  dear,"  Edie  answered  with 
her  brisker,  more  matter-of-fact  manner,  "is  a  sort  of  pat- 
ent safety-valve  or  overflow  cistern  for  the  surplus  ma- 
terial of  the  Xice  season.  As  soon  as  the  summer  grows 
unendurably  hot  on  the  Promenade  des  Anglais,  the 
population  of  the  pensions  and  hotels  on  the  sea-front 
manifest  a  mutually  repulsive  influence — like  the  particles 
of  a  gas,  according  to  that  prodigiously  learned  book  you 
teach  the  girls  elementary  physics  out  of.  The  heat,  in 
fact,  acts  expansively;  it  drives  them  focibly  apart  in  all 
directions — some  to  England,  some  to  St.  Petersburg, 
some  to  America,  and  some  to  the  Italian  lakes  or  the 
Bernese  Oberland.  Well,  that's  what  becomes  of  most  of 
them:  they  melt  away  into  different  atmospheres;  but 
a  few  visitors — the  people  with  families  who  make  Xice 
their  real  home,  not  the  mere  sun-worshipers  who  want 
to  loll  on  the  chairs  on  the  Quai  Massena  or  in  the  Jardin 
Public — retire  for  the  summer  only  just  as  far  as  St. 
Martin  Lantosque.  It's  a  jolly  little  place,  right  up 
among  the  mountains,  thirty  miles  or  so  behind  Nice,  as 
beautiful  as  a  butterfly,  and  as  cool  as  a  cucumber,  and 
supplied  with  all  the  necessaries  of  life,  from  afternoon 
tea  to  a  consular  chaplain.  It's  surrounded  by  the  eternal 
snows, _ if  you  like  them  eternal;  and  well  "situated  for 
penny  ices,  if  you  prefer  your  glaciers  in  that  mitigated 
condition.  And  if  you  went  there,  you  might  manage 
to  combine  business  with  pleasure,  you  see,  by  giving 
lessons  to  the  miserable  remnants  of  the  Nice"  season. 


THE  BALANCE  QUIVERS.  215 

Lots  of  the  families  must  have  little  girls :  lots  of  the  little 
girls  must  be  pining  for  instruction :  lots  of  the  mammas 
must  be  eager  to  find  suitable  companionship;  and  a 
Girton  graduate's  the  very  person  to  supply  them  all  with 
just  what  they  want  in  the  finest  perfection.  We'll  look 
the  matter  up,  Elsie.  I  spy  an  opening." 

"Will  your  brother  come  here  next  winter,  Edie?" 

"I  know  no  cause  or  impediment  why  he  shouldn't,  my 
dear.  He  usually  does  one  winter  with  another.  It's  a 
way  he  has,  to.  follow  his  family.  He  takes  his  pleasure 
out  in  the  exercise  of  the  domestic  affections. — But  why 
do  you  ask  me?" 

"Because" — and  Elsie  hesitated  for  a  moment — "I  think 
— if  he  does — I  oughtn't  to  stay  here." 

"Nonsense,  my  dear,"  Edie  answered  promptly.  It 
was  the  best  way  to  treat  Elsie.  "You  needn't  be  afraid. 
I  know  what  you  mean.  But  don't  distress  yourself: 
men's  hearts  will  stand  a  fearful  deal  of  breaking.  It 
doesn't  hurt  them.  They're  coarse  earthenware  to  our 
egg-shell  porcelain.  He  must  just  pine  away  with  un- 
requited affection  in  his  own  way  as  long  as  he  likes. 
Never  mind  him.  It'll  do  him  good.  It's  yourself  and 
ourselves  you've  got  to  think  of.  He's  quite  happy  as 
long  as  he's  allowed  to  paint  his  own  unsalable  pictures 
in  peace  and  quietness." 

"I  wish  he  could  sell  them,"  Elsie  went  on  reflectively. 
"I  really  do.  It's  a  shame  a  man  who  can  paint  so  beau- 
tifully and  so  poetically  as  he  does  should  have  to  wait 
so  long  and  patiently  for  his  recognition.  He  strikes  too 
high  a  note;  that's  what's  the  matter.  And  yet  I  wouldn't 
like  to  see  him  try  any  lower  one.  I  didn't  understand  him 
at  first,  myself;  and  I'm  sure  I  find  as  much  in  nature 
as  most  people. — But  you  want  to  have  looked  at  things 
for  some  time  together,  through  his  pair  of  spectacles, 
before  you  can  catch  them  exactly  as  he  does.  The  eye 
that  sees  is  half  the  vision." 

"My  dear,"  Edie  answered  in  her  cheery  way,  "we'll 
make  him  succeed.  We'll  push  him  and  pull  him.  He'll 
never  do  it  if  he's  left  to  his  own  devices,  I'm  sure.  He's 
too  utterly  wrapped  up  in  his  work  itself  to  think  much 
of  the  reception  the  mere  vulgar  picture-buying  world 


216  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

accords  it.  The  chink  of  the  guinea  never  distracts  his 
ear  from  higher  music.  But  I'm  a  practical  person,  thank 
heaven — a  woman  of  affairs — and  I  mean  to  advertise 
him.  They  ought  to  hang  him,  and  he  shall  be  hung. 
I'm  going  to  see  to  it.  I  shall  get  Mr.  Hatherley  to  crack 
him  up — Mr.  Hatherley  has  such  a  lot  of  influence,  you 
know,  with  the  newspapers.  Let's  roll  the  log  with  cheer- 
ful persistence.  We  shall  float  him  yet;  you  see  if  we 
don't.  He  shall  be  Warren  Relf,  R.  A.,  with  a  tail  to 
his  name,  before  you  and  I  have  done  launching  him." 

"I  hope  so,"  Elsie  murmured  with  a  quiet  sigh. 

If  Warren  Relf  could  have  heard  that  conversation,  he 
might  have  plucked  up  heart  of  grace  indeed  for  the 
future.  When  a  woman  begins  to  feel  a  living  interest  in 
a  man's  career,  there's  hope  for  him  yet  in  that  woman's 
affections.  Though,  to  be  sure,  Elsie  herself  would  have 
been  shocked  to  believe  it.  She  cherished  her  sorrow  still 
in  her  heart  of  hearts  as  her  dearest  chattel,  her  most  sacred 
possession.  She  brought  incense  and  tears  to  it  daily 
with  pious  awe.  Woman-like,  she  loved  to  take  it  out 
of  its  shrine  and  cry  over  it  each  night  in  her  own  room 
alone,  as  a  religious  exercise.  She  was  faithful  to  the 
Hugh  that  had  never  been,  though  the  Hugh  that  really 
was  had  proved  so  utterly  base  and  unworthy  of  her.  For 
that  first  Hugh's  sake,  she  would  never  love  any  other 
man.  She  could  only  feel  for  Warren  Relf  the  merest 
sisterly  interest  and  grateful  friendship. 

However,  we  must  be  practical,  come  what  may;  we 
must  eat  and  drink  though  our  hearts  ache.  So  it  was 
arranged  at  last  that  Elsie  should  retire  for  the  summer 
to  the  cool  shades  of  St.  Martin  Lantosque;  while  the 
Relfs  returned  to  their  tiny  house  at  128,  Bletchingley 
Road,  London,  W.  A  fewr  pupils  were  even  secured  by 
hook  and  by  crook  for  the  off-season,  and  a  home  provided 
for  Elsie  with  an  American  family,  in  search  of  culture  in 
the  cheapest  market,  who  had  hired  a  villa  in  the  patent 
safety-valve,  to  avoid  the  ever  unpleasant  necessity  for 
returning  to  the  land  of  their  birth,  across  the  stormy 
millpond,  for  the  hot  summer.  The  day  before  the  Relfs 
took  their  departure  from  San  Remo,  Elsie  had  a  few 
words  alone  with  Warren  in  the  pretty  garden  of  the 


THE  BALANCE  QUIVERS.  217 

Villa  Rossa.  There  was  one  thing  she  wanted  to  ask 
him  particularly — a  special  favor,  yet  a  very  delicate  one. 
"Shall  you  be  down  about  the  coast  of  Suffolk  much  this 
year?"  she  asked  timidly.  And  Warren  gathered  at  once 
what  she  meant.  "Yes,"  he  answered  in  almost  as  hesi- 
tating a  voice  as  her  own,  looking  down  at  the  prickly- 
pears  and  green  lizards  by  his  feet,  and  keeping  his  eyes 
studiously  from  meeting  hers ;  "I  shall  be  cruising  round, 
no  doubt,  at  Yarmouth  and  Whitestrand,  and  Lowestoft 
and  Aldeburgh." 

She  noticed  how  ingeniously  he  had  mixed  them  all  up 
together  in  a  single  list,  as  if  none  were  more  interesting 
to  her  mind  than  the  other;  and  she  added  in  an  almost 
inaudible  voice:  "If  you  go  to  Whitestrand,  I  wish  very 
much  you  would  let  me  know  about  poor  dear  Winifred." 

"I  will  let  you  know,"  he  answered,  with  a  bound  of  his 
heart,  proud  even  to  be  intrusted  with  that  doubtful  com- 
mission. "I'll  make  it  my  business  to  go  there  almost  at 
once. — And  I  may  write  and  tell  you  how  I  find  her, 
mayn't  I?" 

Elsie  drew  back,  a  little  frightened  at  his  request.  "Edie 
could  tell  me,  couldn't  she?  That  would  save  you  the 
trouble,"  she  murmured  after  a  pause,  not  without  some 
faint  undercurrent  of  conscious  hypocrisy. 

His  face  fell.  He  was  disappointed  that  he  might  not 
write  to  her  himself  on  so  neutral  a  matter.  "As  you 
will,"  he  answered,  with  a  downcast  look.  "Edie  shall 
do  it,  then." 

Elsie's  heart  was  divided  within  her.  She  saw  her  reply 
hid  hurt  and  distressed  him.  He  was  such  a  good  fellow, 
and  he  would  be  so  pleased  to  write.  But  if  only  he  knew 
how  hopeless  it  was !  What  folly  to  encourage  him,  when 
nothing  on  earth  could  ever  come  of  it!  She  wished  she 
knew  what  she  ought  to  do  under  these  trying  circum- 
stances. Gratitude  would  urge  her  to  say  "Yes,  of 
course;"  but  regard  for  his  own  happiness  would  make 
her  say  "No"  with  crushing  promptitude.  It  was  better 
he  should  understand,  at  once,  without  appeal,  that  it  was 
quite  impossible — a  dream  of  the  wildest.  She  glanced  at 
him  shyly  and  caught  his  eye;  she  fancied  it  was  just  a 
trifle  dimmed.  She  was  so  sorry  for  him.  "Very  well,  Mr. 


218  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

Relf,"  she  murmured,  relenting  and  taking  his  hand  for 
a  moment  to  say  good-bye.  "You  can  write  yourself,  if 
it's  not  too  much  trouble." 

Warren's  heart  gave  a  great  jump.  "Thank  you,"  he 
said,  wringing  her  hand,  oh,  so  hard!  "You  are  very 
kind. — Good-by,  Miss  Challoner."  And  he  raised  his 
hat  and  departed  all  tremulous.  He  went  down  that  after- 
noon to  the  "Mud-Turtle"  in  the  harbor  the  happiest  man 
alive  in  the  whole  of  San  Remo. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

CLOUDS  ON  THE  HORIZON. 

The  Massingers  pitched  their  tent  at  Whitestrand  again 
for  August.  Hugh  did  his  best  indeed  to  put  ®ff  the  evil 
day ;  but  if  you  sell  your  soul  for  gold,  you  must  take  the 
gold  with  all  its  incumbrances ;  and  Winifred's  will  was  a 
small  incumbrance  that  Hugh  had  never  for  one  moment 
reckoned  upon  in  his  ante-nuptial  calculations  of  advant- 
ages and  drawbacks.  He  took  it  for  granted  he  was 
marrying  a  mere  girl,  whom  he  could  mold  and  fashion 
to  his  own  whim  and  fancy.  That  simple,  childish,  blush- 
ing little  thing  had  a  will  of  her  own,  however — ay,  more, 
plenty  of  it.  When  Hugh  proposed  with  an  insinuating 
smile  that  they  should  run  down  for  the  summer  to  Bar- 
mouth  or  Aberystwith — he  loved  North  Wales — Winifred 
replied  with  quiet  dignity:  "Wales  is  stuffy.  There's 
nothing  so  bracing  as  the  east  coast.  After  a  London  sea- 
son, one  needs  bracing.  I  feel  pulled  down.  We'll  go 
and  stop  with  mamma  at  Whitestrarid."  And  she  shut  her 
little  mouth  upon  it  with  a  snap  like  a  rat-trap.  Against 
that  solid  rock  of  sheer  resolution,  Hugh  shattered  himself 
to  no  purpose  in  showery  spray  of  rhetoric  and  reasoning. 
Gibraltar  is  not  more  disdainful  of  the  foam  that  dashes 
upon  its  eternal  cliffs  year  after  year  than  Winifred  was 
to  her  husband's  running  fire  of  argument  and  expostu- 


CLOUDS  ON  THE  HORIZON.  219 

lation.  She  never  deigned  to  argue  in  return ;  she  merely 
repeated  with  naked  iteration  ten  thousand  times  over  the 
categorical  formula,  "We'll  go  to  Whitestrand." 

And  to  Whitestrand  they  went  in  due  time.  The  plas- 
tic male  character  can  no  more  resist  the  ceaseless  pressure 
of  feminine  persistence  than  clay  can  resist  the  hands  of 
the  potter,  or  wood  the  weeping  effect  of  heat  and  dry- 
ness.  Hugh  took  his  way  obediently  to  dull  flat  Suffolk 
when  August  came,  and  relinquished  with  a  sigh  his 
dreams  of  delicious  picnics  by  the  Dolgelly  waterfalls,  and 
his  mental  picture  of  those  phenomenally  big  trout — three 
pounds  apiece,  fisherman's  weight — that  lurk  uncaught 
in  the  deep  green  pools  among  the  rocks  and  stickles  of 
the  plashing  Wnion.  The  Bard  had  sold  himself  for 
prompt  cash  to  the  first  bidder:  he  found  when  it  was  too 
late  he  had  sold  himself  unknown  into  a  mitigated  form  of 
marital  slavery.  The  purchaser  made  her  own  terms  r 
Hugh  was  compelled  meekly  to  accept  them. 

Two  strong  wills  were  clashing  together.  In  serious 
matters,  neither  would  yield.  Each  must  dint  and 
batter  the  other. 

They  did  not  occupy  Elsie's  room  this  time.  Hugh  had 
stipulated  with  all  his  might  for  that  concession  before- 
hand. He  would  never  pass  a  night  in  that  room  again, 
he  said:  the  paint  or  the  woodwork  or  the  chairs  or 
something  made  him  hopelessly  sleepless.  In  those  old 
houses,  sanitary  arrangements  were  always  bad.  Wini- 
fred darted  a  piercing  look  at  him  as  he  shuffled  uneasily 
over  that  lame  excuse.  Already  a  vague  idea  was  fram- 
ing itself  piecemeal  in  her  woman's  mind — a  very  natural 
idea,  when  she  saw  him  so  moody  and  preoccupied  and 
splenetic — that  Hugh  had  been  really  in  love  with  Elsie, 
and  was  in  love  with  Elsie  still,  even  now  that  Elsie  was 
away  in  Australia — else  why  this  unconquerable  and  ab- 
surd objection  to  Elsie's  room?  Did  he  think  he  had 
deceived  and  ill-treated  Elsie? 

A  woman's  mind  goes  straight  to  the  bull's-eye.  No 
use  pretending  to  mislead  her  with  side-issues;  she  flings 
them  aside  with  a  contemptuous  smile,  and  proceeds  at 
once  to  worm  her  way  to  the  kernel  of  the  matter. 

August  wore  away,  and  September  came  in ;  and  Hugh 


220  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

continued  to  mope  and  to  bore  himself  to  his  heart's  con- 
tent at  that  detestable  Whitestrand.  To  distract  his  soul, 
he  worked  hard  at  his  "Ode  to  Manetho;"  but  even 
Manetho,  audacious  theme,  gave  him  scanty  consolation. 
Nay,  his  quaint  "Legend  of  Fee-Faw-Fum,"  that  \vitty 
apologue,  with  its  grimly  humorous  catalogue  of  all  possi- 
ble nightly  fears,  supplied  him  with  food  but  for  one 
solitary  morning's  meditation.  You  can't  cast  out  your 
blue-devils  by  poking  fun  at  them ;  those  cerulean  demons 
will  not  be  laughed  down  or  rudely  exorcised  by  such 
simple  means.  They  recur  in  spite  of  you  with  profound 
regularity.  The  fons  et  origo  mail  was  still  present.  That 
hateful  poplar  still  fronted  his  eyes  wherever  he  moved: 
that  window  with  the  wistaria  still  haunted  his  sight  when- 
ever he  tried  to  lounge  at  his  ease  on  the  lawn  or  in  the 
garden.  The  river,  the  sandhills,  the  meadows,  the  walks, 
all,  all  were  poisoned  to  him:  all  spoke  of  Elsie.  Was 
ever  Nemesis  more  hideous  or  more  complete?  Was 
ever  punishment  more  omnipresent?  He  had  gained  all 
he  wished,  and  lost  his  owrn  soul ;  at  every  turn  of  his  own 
estate  some  horrible  memento  of  his  shame  and  his  guilt 
rose  up  to  confuse  him.  He  wished  he  \vas  dead  every 
day  he  lived:  dead,  and  asleep  in  his  grave,  beside  Elsie. 
As  that  dreaded  anniversary,  the  seventeenth  of  Septem- 
ber, slowly  approached — the  anniversary,  as  Hugh  felt 
it,  of  Elsie's  murder — his  agitation  and  his  gloom  increased 
visibly.  Winifred  wondered  silently  to  herself  what  on 
earth  could  ail  him.  During  the  last  few  weeks,  he 
seemed  to  have  become  another  man.  An  atmosphere  of 
horror  and  doubt  surrounded  him.  On  the  fifteenth,  two 
days  before  the  date  of  Elsie's  disappearance,  she  went  up 
hastily  to  their  common  room.  The  door  was  half-locked, 
but  not  securely  fastened:  it  yielded  to  a  sudden  jerk  of 
her  wrist,  and  she  entered  abruptly — to  find  Hugh,  with 
a  guilty  red  face,  pushing  away  a  "small  bundle  of  letters 
and  a  trinket  of  some  kind  info  a  tiny  cabinet  which  he 
always  mysteriously  carried  about  w'ith  him.  She  had 
hardly  tinae  to  catch  them  distinctly,  but  the  trinket  looked 
like  a  watch  or  a  locket.  The  letters,  too,  ske  managed 
to  note,  were  tied  together  with  an  elastic  band,  and  num- 
bered in  clear  red  ink  on  the  envelopes.  More  than  that 


CLOUDS  ON  THE  HORIZON.  221 

she  had  no  chance  to  see.  But  her  feminine  curiosity  was 
strongly  excited;  the  more  so  as  Hugh  banged  down  the 
lid  on  its  spring  lock  with  guilty  haste,  and  proceeded 
with  hot  and  fiery  fingers  to  turn  the  key  upon  the  whole 
set  in  his  own  portmanteau. 

"Hugh,"  she  cried,  standing  still  to  gaze  upon  him, 
"what  do  you  keep  in  that  little  cabinet?" 

Hugh  turned  upon  her  as  she  had  never  before  seen 
him  turn.  No  longer  clay  in  the  hands  of  the  potter,  he 
stood  stiff  and  hard  like  adamant  then.  "If  I  had  meant 
you  to  know,"  he  said  coldly,  "I  would  have  told  you  long 
ago.  I  did  not  tell  you,  therefore  I  did  not  mean  you  to 
know.  Ask  me  no  questions.  This  incident  is  now  closed. 
Say  nothing  more  about  it."  And  he  turned  on  his  heel 
and  left  her  astonished. 

That  was  all.  Winifred  cried  the  night  through,  but 
Hugh  remained  still  absolute  adamant.  Next  morning, 
she  altered  her  tactics  completely,  and  drying  her  eyes 
once  for  all,  said  never  another  word  on  the  subject.  She 
even  pretended  to  be  cheerful  and  careless.  When  a 
woman  pretends  to  be  cheerful  and  careless  after  a  domes- 
tic scene,  the  luckless  man  whose  destiny  she  holds  in  the 
hollow  of  her  hand  may  well  tremble,  especially  if  there  is 
something  he  wants  to  conceal  from  her.  She  means  to 
egg  it  all  out,  and  egged  out  it  will  all  be,  as  certainly  as 
the  sun  will  rise  to-morrow.  It  may  take  a  long  time;  but 
it  will  come  for  all  that.  A  woman  on  the  track  of  a  secret, 
pretending  carelessness,  is  a  dangerous  animal.  She  will 
go  far.  Hanc  tu,  Romane,  caveto. 

On  the  sixteenth,  Winifred  formed  a  little  plan  of  her 
own,  which  she  ventilated  with  childish  effusion  at  lunch- 
time.  "Hugh,  dear,"  she  said  in  her  most  winning  voice, 
"do  you  happen  to  remember — if  you've  time  for  such 
trifles — that  to-morrow's  a  very  special  anniversary?" 

Hugh's  cheek  blanched  as  if  by  magic.  What  devilry 
was  this?  What  deliberate  cruelty?  For  the  moment  his 
usual  courage  and  presence  of  mind  forsook  him.  Had 
Winifred,  then,  found  out  everything? — A  special  anni- 
versary, indeed!  As  if  he  could  forget  it! — And  that  she, 
for  whose  sake — with  the  manor  of  Whitestrand  thrown 
in — he  had  done  it  all  and  made  himself  next  door  to  a 


222  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

murderer — that  she,  of  all  people  in  the  world,  should  cast 
it  in  his  teeth,  and  make  bitter  game  of  him  about  Elsie's 
death!  "Well,  Winifred,"  he  answered  in  a  strange  low 
voice,  looking  hard  at  her  eyes :  "I  suppose  I'm  not  likely 
to  forget  it,  am  I  ?" 

Winifred  noted  the  tone  silently.  Aloud,  she  gave  no 
token  in  any  way  of  having  observed  his  singular  manner. 
— "It's  a  year  to-morrow  since  Hugh  proposed  to  me, 
you  know,  mamma  dear,"  she  went  on,  in  her  quietest  and 
most  cutting  voice,  turning  round  to  her  mother,  "and  he 
does  me  the  honor  to  say  politely  he  isn't  likely  to  forget 
the  occasion. — For  a  whole  year,  he's  actually  remembered 
it  But  it  seems  to  make  him  terribly  grumpy. — Never 
mind,  Hugh;  I'll  let  you  off.  I'm  a  sweet  little  angel,  and 
I'm  not  going  to  be  angry  with  my  great  bear :  so  there, 
Mr.  Constellation,  you  see  I've  forgiven  you. — Now,  what 
I  was  going  to  say's  just  this.  As  to-morrow's  a  special 
anniversary  in  our  lives,  I  propose  we  shall  celebrate  it 
with  becoming  dignity." 

"Which  means,  I  suppose,  the  ordinary  British  symbol 
of  merry-making,  a  plum-pudding  for  dinner,"  Hugh  in- 
terposed bitterly.  He  saw  his  mistake  with  perfect  clear- 
ness now,  but  he  hadn't  the  tact  or  the  grace  to  conceal 
it,  with  a  woman's  cleverness,  under  a  show  of  good- 
humor. 

"A  plum-pudding  is  banal,"  Winifred  answered  with  a 
smile — "distinctly  banal.  I'm  surprised  a  member  of  the 
Cheyne  Row  set  should  even  dream  of  suggesting  it. 
What  would  Mr.  Hatherley  say  if  he  heard  the  Immortal 
One  make  such  a  proposition?  He'd  detect  in  it  the 
strong  savor  of  Philistia;  he'd  declare  you'd  joined  the 
hosts  of  Goliath. — No.  It  isn't  a  plum-pudding.  My 
idea's  this.  Why  shouldn't  we  go  for  a  family  picnic, 
just  our  three  selves,  in  honor  of  the  occasion?" 

"A  picnic!"  Hugh  cried,  aghast — "a  picnic  to-morrow! 
—On  the  seventeenth!" — Then  recollecting  himself  once 
more,  he  added  hastily:  "In  this  unsettled  weather!  The 
sandhills  are  soaked.  There  isn't  a  place  on  the  whole 
estate  one  could  arrange  to  seat  one's  self  down  on  com- 
fortably." 

"I  hadn't  thought  of  the  sandhills,"  Winifred  answered 


CLOUDS  ON  THE  HORIZON.  223 

with  quiet  dignity.    "I  thought  it'd  be  awfully  nice  if  we  all 
bespoke  a  dry  seat  in  Mr.  Relf's  yawl " 

"Relf's  yawl!"  Hugh  cried  aloud,  with  increasing  ex-, 
citement.  "You  don't  mean  to  say  that  creature's  here 
again!" 

"That  creature,  I'm  in  a  position  to  state  without  re- 
serve," Winifred  answered  chillily,  "ran  up  the  river  to 
the  Fisherman's  Rest  late  last  night,  as  lively  as  ever.  I 
saw  the  'Mud-Turtle'  come  in  myself,  before  a  chipping 
breeze!  And  Mr.  Stannaway  told  me  this  morning  Mr. 
Relf  was  a-lying  off  the  hard,  just  opposite  Stannaway 's. 
So  I  thought  it'd  be  a  capital  plan,  in  memory  of  old  times, 
if  we  got  Mr.  Relf  to  take  us  down  in  the  yawl  to  Orford- 
ness,  land  us  comfortably  at  the  Low  Light,  and  let  us 
picnic  on  the  nice  dry  ridge  of  big  shingle  just  above  the 
graveyard  where  they  bury  the  wretched  sailors." 

Hugh's  whole  soul  was  on  fire  within  him;  but  his  face 
was  pale,  and  his  hands  deadly  cold.  Was  this  pure  acci- 
dent, mere  coincidence,  or  was  it  designed  and  deliberate 
torture  on  Winifred's  part,  he  wondered?  To  picnic  in 
sight  of  Elsie's  nameless  grave,  on  the  very  anniversary 
of  Elsie's  death,  with  every  concomitant  of  pretended 
rejoicing  that  could  make  that  ghastly  act  more  ghastly 
still  than  it  would  otherwise  be  in  its  own  mere  naked 
brutality.  It  was  too  sickening  to  think  upon.  But  did 
Winifred  know?  Could  Winifred  mean  it  as  a  punishment 
for  his  silence?  Or  had  she  merely  blundered  upon  that 
horrible  proposition  as  a  sheer  coincidence  out  of  pure 
accident? 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  last  solution  was  the  true  and 
simple  one.  The  sandhills,  or  Orfordness,  were  the  two 
recognized  alternative  picknicking  places  where  all  White- 
strand  invariably  disported  itself.  If  you  didn't  go  to  the 
one,  you  went  as  a  matter  of  course  to  the  other.  There 
was  no  third  way  open  to  the  most  deliberate  and  states- 
manlike of  mortals.  The  Meyseys  had  gone  to  Orford- 
ness for  years.  Why  not  go  there  on  the  anniversary  of 
Winnie's  engagement?  To  Winifred,  the  proposal  seemed 
simplicity  itself;  to  Hugh,  it  seemed  like  a  strangely  per- 
verse and  cunning  piece  of  sheer  feminine  cruelty. 


224  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

"There's  nothing  to  see  at  Orfordness,"  he  said  shortly 
— "nothing  but  a  great  bare  bank  of  sand  and  shingle,  and 
a  couple  of  lighthouses,  standing  alone  in  a  perfect  desert 
of  desolation. — Besides,  the  weather's  just  beastly. — Much 
better  stop  at  home  as  usual  by  ourselves,  and  eat  our  din- 
ner here  in  peace  and  quietness!  This  isn't  the  sort  of 
season  for  picnicking." 

"Oh!  but  Hugh,"  Mrs.  Meysey  put  in,  with  her  mater- 
nal authority,  ''you  know  we  always  go  to  Orfordness. 
It's  really  quite  a  charming  place  in  its  way.  The  sands 
are  so  broad  and  hard  and  romantic.  We  sail  down,  and 
picnic  at  the  lighthouse;  and  then  we  get  a  man  to  row 
us  across  the  river  at  the  back  to  Orford  Castle — there's 
a  splendid  view  from  Orford  Castle — and  altogether  it 
makes  a  delightful  excursion,  of-  its  kind,  for  Suffolk. 
We  ought  to  do  something  to  commemorate  the  day. — 
If  we  weren't  in  such  deep  mourning  still" — and  Mrs. 
Meysey  glanced  down  with  a  conventional  sigh  at  her 
crape  excrescences — "we'd  ask  a  few  friends  in  to  dinner; 
but  I'm  afraid  it's  a  little  too  soon  for  that.  Still,  at  any 
rate,  there  could  be  no  harm — not  the  slightest  harm — 
in  our  just  running  down  to  Orfordness  for  a  family  pic- 
nic. It's  precisely  the  same  as  lunching  at  home  here 
together." 

"Do  you  remember,  Hugh,"  Winifred  went  on,  mus- 
ingly*, putting  the  screw  on,  "how  we  walked  out  that 
morning,  a  year  ago,  by  the  water-side ;  and  how  you 
picked  a  bit  of  forget-me-not  and  meadow  sweet  from 
the  bank  and  gave  it  me;  and  what  pretty  verses  about 
undying  love  you  repeated  as  you  gave  it? — And  in  the 
evening,  mamma,  I  had  to  go  out  to  dinner,  all  alone  with 
you  and  poor  dear  papa,  to  Snade  vicarage!  I  recollect 
how  angry  and  annoyed  I  was  because  I  had  to  go  out 
and  leave  Hugh  that  particular  evening!  and  because  I'd 
worn  that  same  dinner  dress  at  Snade  vicarage  three  par- 
ties running!" 

"Yes,"  Mrs.  Meysey  continued,  with  another  deep-drawn 
sigh  ;^  "and  what  a  night  that  was,  to  be  sure!  So  full  of 
surprises!  It  was  the  night,  you  know,  when  poor  Elsie 
Challoner  ran  away  from  us.  '  You  got  engaged  to  Hugh 


CLOUDS  ON  THE  HORIZON.  225 

in  the  morning,  and  in  the  evening  Elsie  disappeared  as 
if  by  magic !  Such  a  coincidence !  Poor  dear  Elsie !  Not 
a  year  ago!  A  year,  to-morrow!" 

"No,  mother  dear.  That  was  the  eighteenth.  I  was 
engaged  on  the  Wednesday,  you  recollect,  and  it  was  the 
Thursday  when  we  found  out  Elsie  had  gone  away  from 
us." 

"Thursday,  the  eighteenth,  when  we  found  it  out,  dear," 
Mrs.  Meysey  repeated  in  a  decisive  voice  (the  maternal 
mind  is  strong  on  dates) ;  but  Wednesday,  the  seventeenth, 
late  in  the  evening,  of  course,  when  she  went  away  from 
us. — Poor  dear  Elsie!  I  wonder  what's  become  of  her! 
It's  curious  she  doesn't  write  to  you  oftener,  Winifred." 

Were  they  working  upon  his  feelings,  of  malice  pre- 
pense? Were  they  trying  to  make  him  blurt  out  the  truth? 
he  wondered.  Hugh  Massinger  in  his  agony  could  stand 
it  no  longer.  He  rose  from  the  table  and  went  over  to 
the  window.  There,  the  poplar  stared  him  straight  in  the 
face.  He  turned  around  and  looked  hard  at  Winifred. 
Her  expressionless  blue  eyes  were  placid  as  usual.  "Then, 
if  it's  fine,"  she  said,  in  an  insipid  voice,  "we'll  ask  Mr.  Relf 
to  give  us  a  lift  down  to  Orfordness  to-morrow  in  the 
'Mud-Turtle.' " 

"No!"  Hugh  thundered  in  an  angry  tone.  "However 
you  go,  Relf  shan't  take  you.  I  don't  want  to  see  any  more 
of  Relf.  I  dislike  Relf;  I  object  to  Relf.  He's  a  mean  cur! 
I  won't  go  anywhere  with  Relf  in  future." 

"But,  children,  you  should  never  let  your  angry  passions 
rise,"  Winifred  murmured  provokingly.  "'  Your  little 
hands  were  never  meant  to  tear  each  other's  eyes/  If  he 
doesn't  want  to  go  in  Mr.  Relf's  boat,  he  shan't  be  made  to, 
then,  poor  little  fellow.  He  shall  do  exactly  as  he  likes 
himself.  He  shall  have  another  boat  all  of  his  own.  I'll 
order  one  this  evening  for  him  at  Martin's  or  at  Stanna- 
way's." 

"If  it's  fine,"  Mrs.  Meysey  interposed  parenthetically. 

"If  it's  fine,  of  course,"  Winifred  answered,  rising.  "We 
don't  want  to  picnic  in  a  torrent  of  rain. — Whatever  else 
we  may  be,  we're  rational  animals. — But  how  do  you 
know,  Hugh,  what  Orfordness  is  like?  You  can't  tell. 
You've  never  been  there." 


226  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

"I  went  there  once  alone  last  year,"  Hugh  answered 
sulkily;  "and  I  saw  enough  of  the  beastly  hole  then  to 
know  very  well  I  don't  desire  its  further  acquaintance." 

"But  you  never  told  me  you'd  been  over  there." 

Hugh  managed  to  summon  up  a  sardonic  smile.  "I 
wasn't  married  to  you  then,  Winnie,"  he  answered,  with 
a  savage  snarl,  that  showed  his  projecting  canines  with 
most  unpleasant  distinctness.  "My  goings-out  and  my 
comings-in  were  not  yet  a  matter  of  daily  domestic  inqui- 
sition. I  hadn't  to  report  myself  every  time  I  came  or 
Went,  like  a  soldier  in  barracks  to  his  commanding  officer. 
— I  went  to  Orfordness  one  day  for  a  walk — by  myself — 
unbidden — for  my  own  amusement." 

All  that  afternooon  and  late  into  the  evening,  Hugh 
watched  the  clouds  and  the  barometer  eagerly.  His  fate 
that  day  hung  upon  a  spider's  web.  If  it  rained  to-morrow, 
all  might  yet  be  well ;  if  not,  he  felt  in  his  own  soul  they 
stood  within  measurable  distance  of  a  domestic  cataclysm. 
He  would  not  go  to  Orfordness  with  Winifred.  He  could 
not  go  to  Orfordness  with  Winifred.  That  much  was  cer- 
tain. He  could  not  picnic,  on  the  anniversary  of  Elsie's 
death,  within  sight  of  Elsie's  nameless  grave,  in  company 
with  those  two  strange  women — his  wife  and  his  mother- 
in-law.  Ugh!  how  he  hated  the  bare  idea!  If  it  came  to 
the  worst — if  it  was  fine  to-morrow — he  must  either  break 
forever  with  Winifred — for  she  would  never  give  in — or 
else  he  must  fling  himself  off  the  roots  of  the  poplar,  where 
Elsie  had  flung  herself  off  that  day  twelve  months  ago, 
and  drown  as  she  had  drowned  among  the  angry  breakers. 

There  would  be  a  certain  dramatic  completeness  and 
roundness  about  that  particular  fate  which  commended 
itself  especially  to  Hugh  Massinger's  poetical  nature.  It 
would  read  so  like  a  Greek  tragedy — a  tale  of  Ate  and 
Hubris  and  Nemesis.  Even  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
outer  world,  who  knew  but  the  husk,  it  would  seem  roman- 
tic enough  to  drown  one's  self,  disconsolate,  on  the  very 
anniversary  of  one's  first  engagement  to  the  young  wife, 
one  meant  to  leave  an  untimely  widow.  But  to  Hugli 
Massinger  himself,  who  knew  the  whole  kernel  and  core 
of  the_  story^  it  would  be  infinitely  more  romantic  and 
charming  in  its  way  to  drown  one's  self  off  the  same  pop- 


CLOUDS  ON  THE  HORIZON.  227 

lar  on  the  self-same  day  that  Elsie  had  drowned  herself. 
No  bard  could  wish  for  a  gloomier  or  more  appropriate 
death.  Would  it  rain  or  shine?  On  that  slender  thread  of 
doubt  h'is  whole  future  now  hung  and  trembled. 

The  morning  of  the  seventeenth  dawned  at  last,  and 
Hugh  rose  early,  to  draw  aside  the  bedroom  blinds  for  a 
moment  A  respite !  a  respite !  It  was  pouring  a  regular 
English  downpour.  There  was  no  hope — or  no  danger, 
rather — of  a  picnic  to-day.  Thank  heaven  for  that.  It 
put  off  his  fate.  It  saved  him  the  inconvenience  and  worry 
of  having  to  drown  himself  this  particular  morning.  And 
yet  the  denouement  would  have  been  so  strictly  dramatic 
that  he  almost  regretted  a  shower  of  rain  should  intervene 
to  spoil  it. 

At  ten  o'clock  he  started  out  alone  in  the  blinding  down- 
pour and  took  the  train  as  far  as  Aldeburgh.  Thence  he 
followed  the  shingle  beach  to  Orfordness,  plodding  on, 
as  he  had  done  a  year  before,  over  the  loose  stones,  but 
through  drenching  rain,  instead  of  under  hot  and  blazing 
sunlight.  When  he  reached  the  lighthouse,  he  sat  himself 
down  in  pilgrim  guise  beside  Elsie's  grave  in  the  steady 
drip,  and  did  penance  once  more  by  that  unknown  tomb 
in  solemn  silence.  Not  even  the  lighthouse-man  came 
out  this  time  to  gaze  at  him  in  wonder ;  it  poured  too  hard 
and  too  persistently  for  that.  He  sat  there  alone  for  half 
an  hour,  by  Elsie's  watch ;  for  he  had  wound  it  that  morn- 
ing with  reverent  hands,  and  brought  it  away  with  him  for 
that  very  purpose.  A  little  rusty,  perhaps,  from  the  sea, 
it  would  keep  good  time  enough  still  for  all  he  needed. 
At  the  end  of  the  half-hour  he  rose  once  more,  plodded 
back  again  over  the  shingle  in  his  dripping  clothes,  and 
catching  the  last  train  home  to  Almundham,  reached 
Whitestrand  just  in  time  to  dress  for  dinner. 

Winifred  was  waiting  for  him  at  the  front  door,  white 
with  emotion — not  so  much  anger  as  slighted  attention. 
"Where  have  you  been?"  she  asked,  in  a  cold  voice,  as  he 
arrived  at  the  porch,  a  dripping,  draggled,  wearied  pedes- 
trian, in  a  soaking  suit  of  last  year's  tweeds. 

"Didn't  I  say  well  I  was  bound  to  report  myself  to  my 
commanding  officer?"  Hugh  answered  tauntingly.  "All 
right,  then;  I  proceed  at  once  to  report  myself.  I  may  as 


228  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL,. 

well  tell  you  as  leave  you  to  worry.  I've  been  to  Orfonl- 
ness — alone — tramped  it." 

"To  Orfordness!"  his  wife  echoed  in  profound  astonish- 
ment. "You  didn't  want  to  go  with  us  there  if  it  was  fine. 
Why,  what  on  earth,  Hugh,  did  you  ever  go  there  in  this 
pelting  rain  for?" 

"Your  mother  recommended  it,"  Hugh  answered  sul- 
lenly, "as  a  place  of  amusement.  She  said  it  was 
altogether  a  most  delightful  excursion.  She  praised  the 
sands  as  firm  and  romantic.  So  I  thought  I'd  try  it  on 
her  recommendation.  I  found  it  damp,  decidedly  damp. — 
Send  me  my  shoes,  please!''  And  that  was  all  the  expla- 
nation he  ever  vouchsafed  her. 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 
REPORTING  PROGRESS. 

Warren  Relf  spent  many  days  that  summer  at  White- 
strand,  cruising  vaguely  about  the  mouth  of  the  Char,  or 
wandering  and  sketching  among  the  salt-marsh  meadows ; 
but  he  never  happened  to  come  face  to  face,  by  accident 
or  design,  with  Hugh  Massinger.  Fate  seemed  persist- 
ently to  interpose  between  them.  Once  or  twice,  indeed, 
Winifred  said  with  some  slight  asperity  to  her  husband, 
"Don't  you  think,  Hugh,  if  it  were  only  for  old  acquaint- 
ance' sake,  we  ought  to  ask  that  creature  Relf  some  day 
to  dinner?" 

But  Hugh,  who  was  yielding  enough  in  certain  matters, 
was  as  marble  here:  he  could  never  consent  to  receive  his 
enemy,  of  his  own  accord,  beneath  his  own  roof — for 
Whitestrand,  after  all,  was  his  own  in  reality.  "No,"  he 
growled  out,  looking  up  from  his  paper  testily.  "I  don't 
like  the  fellow.  I've  heard  things  about  him  that  make 
me  sorry  I  ever  accepted  his  hospitality.  If  you  happen 
to  meet  him,  Winifred,  prowling  about  the  place  and  try- 
ing to  intercept  you,  I  forbid  you  to  speak  to  him." 

"You  forbid  me,  Hugh?" 

"Yes"— coldly— "I  forbid  you." 

Winifred  bit  her  lip,  and  was  discreetly  silent.    No  need 


REPORTING  PROGRESS.  22* 

to  answer.  Those  two  proud  wills  were  beginning  already 
to  clash  more  ominously  one  against  the  other.  "Very 
well,"  the  young  wife  thought  in  silence  to  herself;  "if  he 
means  to  mew  me  up,  seraglio  and  zenana  fashion,  in  my 
own  rooms,  he  should  hire  a  guard  and  some  Circassian 
slaves,  and  present  me  with  a  yashmak  to  cover  my  face 
with." 

A  day  or  two  later,  as  she  strolled  on  some  errand  into 
the  placid  village,  she  came  suddenly  upon  Warren  Relf, 
in  his  rough  jersey  and  sailor  cap,  hanging  about  the 
lane,  sketch-book  in  hand,  not  without  some  vague  expec- 
tation, as  Hugh  had  said,  of  accidentally  intercepting  her. 
It  was  a  painful  duty,  but  Elsie  had  laid  it  upon  him;  and 
Elsie's  will  was  law  now.  Naturally,  he  had  never  told 
Elsie  about  the  meeting  with  Hugh  at  the  Cheyne  Row 
Club.  If  he  had,  she  would  never  have  imposed  so  diffi- 
cult, delicate,  and  dangerous  a  task  upon  him.  But  she 
knew  nothing;  and  so  she  had  sent  him  on  this  painful 
errand. 

Winifred  smiled  a  frank  smile  of  recognition  as  she 
came  up  close  to  him.  The  painter  pulled  off  his  awkward 
cap  awkwardly  and  unskillfully. 

"You  were  going  to  pass  me  by,  Mr.  Relf,"  she  said, 
with  a  good-humored  nod.  "You  won't  recognize  me  or 
have  anything  to  do  with  me,  perhaps,  now  I'm  married 
and  done  for!" 

The  words  gave  him  an  uncomfortable  thrill;  they 
seemed  so  ominous,  so  much  truer  than  she  thought  them. 

''I  hardly  did  know  you,"  he  answered  with  a  forced 
smile.  "I've  not  been  accustomed  to  see  you  in  black 
before,  Mrs.  Massinger. — And  to  say  the  truth,  when  I 
come  to  look  at  you,  you're  paler  and  thinner  than  when 
I  last  met  you." 

Winifred  coughed — a  little  dry  cough.  Women  always 
take  sympathetic  remarks  about  their  ill  health  in  a  dis- 
paraging sense  to  their  personal  appearance.  "A  London 
season!"  she  answered,  smiling;  yet  even  her  smile  had 
a  certain  unwonted  air  of  sadness  about  it.  "Too  many  of 
Mrs.  Bouverie  Barton's  literary  evenings  have  unhinged 
me,  I  suppose.  My  small  brains  have  been  over-stimu- 
lated.— You've  not  been  up  to  the  Hall  yet  to  see  us,  Mr. 


2so  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

Relf.  I  saw  the  'Mud-Turtle'  come  ploughing  bravely  in 
some  three  or  four  days  ago,  and  I  wondered  you'd  never 
looked  up  old  friends. — For  of  course  you  know  I  owe  you 
something:  it  was  you  who  first  brought  dear  Hugh  to 
Whitestrand." 

How  Warren  ever  got  through  the  remainder  of  that 
slippery  interview,  gliding  with  difficulty  over  the  thin  ice, 
he  hardly  knew.  He  walked  with  Winifred  to  the  end  of 
the  lane,  talking  in  vague  generalities  of  politeness;  and 
then,  with  some  lame  excuse  of  the  state  of  the  tide,  he 
took  a  brusque  and  hasty  leave  of  her.  He  felt  himself 
guilty  for  talking  to  her  at  all,  considering  the  terms  on 
which  he  stood  with  her  husband.  But  Elsie's  will  over- 
rode everything.  When  he  wrote  to  Elsie,  that  letter  he 
had  looked  forward  to  so  long  and  eagerly,  it  was  with 
a  heavy  heart  and  an  accusing  conscience;  for  he  felt 
somehow,  from  the  forced  gaiety  of  Winifred's  ostenta- 
tiously careless  manner,  that  things  were  not  going  quite 
so  smoothly  as  a  wedding-bell  at  the  Hall  already.  That 
poor  young  wife  was  ill  at  ease.  However,  for  Elsie's  sake, 
he  would  make  the  best  of  it.  Why  worry  and  trouble 
poor  heart-broken  Elsie  more  than  absolutely  needful 
with  Winifred's  possible  or  actual  misfortunes? 

"I  didn't  meet  your  cousin  himself,"  he  wrote  with  a 
very  doubtful  hand — it  was  hard  to  have  even  to  refer  to 
the  subject  at  all  to  Elsie;  "but  I  came  across  Mrs.  Mas- 
singer  one  afternoon,  strolling  in  the  lane,  with  her  pet 
pug,  and  looking  very  pretty  in  her  light  half-mourning, 
though  a  trifle  paler  and  thinner  than  I  had  yet  known  her. 
She  attributes  her  paleness,  however,  to  too  much  gaiety 
during  the  London  season  and  to  the  late  hours  of  Bohe- 
mian society.  I  hope  a  few  weeks  at  Whitestrand  will  set 
her  fully  up  again,  and  that  when  I  have  next  an  oppor- 
tunity of  meeting  her,  I  may  be  able  to  send  you  a  good 
report  of  her  health  and  happiness." 

How  meager,  how  vapid,  how  jejune,  how  convention- 
al! Old  Mrs.  Walpole  of  the  vicarage  herself  could  not 
have  worded  it  more  baldly  or  more  flabbily.  And  this 
was  the  letter  he  had  been  burning  to  write :  this  the  op- 
portunity be  had  been  so  eagerly  awaiting!  What  a  note 
to  send  to  his  divine  Elsie!  He  tore  it  up  and  wrote 


REPORTING  PROGRESS.  231 

it  again  half  a  dozen  times  over,  before  he  was  finally 
satisfied  to  accept  his  dissatisfaction  as  an  immutable, 
inevitable,  and  unconquerable  fact.  And  then,  he  compen- 
sated himself  by  writing  out  in  full,  for  his  own  mere 
subjective  gratification,  the  sort  of  letter  he  would  have 
liked  to  write  her,  if  circumstances  permitted  it — a  burn- 
ing letter  of  fervid  love,  beginning,  "My  own  darling, 
darling  Elsie,"  and  ending,  with  hearts  and  darts  and  tears 
and  protestations,  "Yours  ever  devotedly  and  lovingly, 
Warren."  Which  done,  he  burned  the  second  genuine 
letter  in  a  solemn  holocaust  with  a  lighted  fusee,  and  sent 
off  that  stilted  formal  note  to  "Dear  Miss  Challoner,"  with 
many  regrets  and  despondent  aspirations.  And  as  soon 
as  he  had  dropped  it  into  the  village  letter-box,  all  aglow 
with  shame,  the  "Mud-Turtle"  was  soon  under  way,  with 
full  canvas  set,  before  a  breathless  air,  on  her  voyage 
once  more  to  Lowestoft. 

But  Winifred  never  mentioned  to  Hugh  that  she  had 
met  and  spoken  to  "that  creature  Relf,"  with  whom  he 
had  so  sternly  and  authoritatively  forbidden  her  to  hold 
any  sort  of  communication.  That  was  bad — a  beginning 
of  evil.  The  first  great  breach  was  surely  opening  out 
by  slow  degrees  between  them. 

A  week  later,  as  the  yawl  lay  idle  on  her  native  mud  in 
Yarmouth  harbor,  Warren  Relf,  calling  at  the  postoffice 
for  his  expected  budget,  received  a  letter  with  a  French 
stamp  on  it,  and  a  postmark  bearing  the  magical  words, 
"St.  Martin  Lantosque,  Alpes  Maritimes,"  which  made  his 
quick  breath  come  and  go  spasmodically.  He  tore  it 
open  with  a  beating  heart. 

"Dear  Mr.  Relf"  (it  said  simply), 

"How  very  kind  of1  you  to  take  the  trouble  of  going 
to  Whitestrand  and  sending  me  so  full  and  careful  an 
account  of  dear  Winifred.  Thank  you  ever  so  much  for 
all  your  goodness.  But  you  are  always  kind.  I  have 
learnt  to  expect  it. 

"Yours  very  sincerely, 

"Elsie  Challoner." 

That  was  all:  those  few  short  words;  but  Warren  Relf 


2S2  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

lived  on  that  brief  note  night  and  morning,  till  the  time 
came  when  he  might  return  once  more  in  his  small  craft 
to  the  South  and  to  Elsie. 

When  he  did  return,  with  the  southward  tide  of  in- 
valids and  swallows,  Elsie  had  left  the  first  poignancy  of 
her  grief  a  year  behind  her;  but  Warren  saw  quite  clearly 
still,  with  sinking  heart,  that  she  was  true  as  ever  to  the 
Hugh  that  was  not  and  that  never  had  been.  She  re- 
ceived him  kindly,  like  a  friend  and  a  brother;  but  her 
manner  was  none  the  less  the  cold  fixed  manner  of  a 
woman  who  has  lived  her  life  out  to  the  bitter  end,  and 
whose  heart  has  been  broken  once  and  forever.  When 
Warren  saw  her,  his  soul  despaired.  He  felt  it  was  cruel 
even  to  hope.  But  Edie,  most  cheerful  of  optimists, 
laughed  him  to  scorn.  "If  I  were  a  man,"  she  cried  bold- 
ly, and  then  broke  off.  That  favorite  feminine  aposiopesis 
is  the  most  cutting  known  form  of  criticism.  Warren 
noted  it,  and  half  took  heart,  half  desponded  again  more 
utterly  than  ever. 

Still,  he  had  one  little  buttress  left  for  his  failing  hopes: 
there  was  no  denying  that  Elsie's  interest  in  his  art,  as  art, 
increased  daily.  She  let  him  give  her  lessons  in  water- 
colors  now,  and  she  watched  his  own  patient  and  delicate 
work  with  constant  attention  and  constant  admiration, 
among  the  rocks  and  bays  of  the  inexhaustible  Riviera. 
During  that  second  sunny  winter  at  San  Remo,  in  fact, 
they  grew  for  the  first  time  to  know  one  another.  War- 
ren's devotion  told  slowly,  for  no  woman  is  wholly  proof 
in  some  lost  corner  of  her  heart  against  a  man's  determined 
and  persistent  love.  She  could  not  love  him  in  return, 
to  be  sure:  oh  no;  impossible:  all  that  was  over  long 
ago,  forever:  an  ingrained  sense  of  womanly  consistency 
barred  the  way  to  love  for  the  rest  of  the  ages.  But  she 
liked  him  immensely;  she  saw  his  strong  points;  she 
admired  his  earnestness,  his  goodness,  his  singleness  of 
purpose,  his  worship  of  his  art,  and  his  hopeless  and 
chivalrous  attachment  to  herself  into  the  bargain.  It? 
very  hopelessness  touched  her  profoundly.  He  could 
never  expect  her  to  return  his  love;  of  that  she  was  sure; 
but  he  loved  her  for  all  that;  and  she  acknowledged  it 
gratefully.  In  one  word,  she  liked  him  as  much  as  it 


REPORTING  PROGRESS.  233 

is  possible  for  a  woman  to  like  a  man  she  is  not  and  can- 
not ever  be  in  love  with. 

"Is  that  right  yet,  Miss  Challoner?"  Warren  asked  one 
day,  with  a  glance  at  his  canvas,  as  he  sat  with  Edie  and 
Elsie  on  the  deck  of  the  "Mud-Turtle,"  painting  in  a  mass 
of  hanging  ruddy-brown  seaweed,  whose  redness  of  tone 
Elsie  thought  he  had  somewhat  needlessly  exaggerated. 

"Why  'Miss  Challoner'?"  Edie  asked  with  one  of  her 
sudden  arch  looks  at  her  brother.  "We're  all  in  the  fam- 
ily, now,  you  know,  Warren.  Why  not  'Elsie'?  She's 
Elsie  of  course  to  all  the  rest  of  us." 

Warren  glanced  into  the  depths  of  Elsie's  dark  eyes 
with  an  inquiring  look.  "May  it  be,  Elsie?"  he  asked,  all 
tremors. 

She  looked  back  at  him,  frankly  and  openly.  "Yes, 
Warren,  if  you  like,"  she  said  in  a  simple  straightforward 
tone  that  disarmed  criticism.  The  answer,  in  fact,  half 
displeased  him.  She  granted  it  too  easily,  with  too  little 
reserve.  He  would  have  preferred  it  even  if  she  had  said 
"No,"  with  a  trifle  more  coyness,  more  maidenly  timidity. 
The  half  is  often  better  than  the  whole.  She  assented  like 
one  to  whom  assent  is  a  matter  of  slight  importance.  It 
was  clear  the  permission  meant  nothing  to  her.  And  to 
him  it  might  have  meant  so  much,  so  much!  He  bit  his 
lip,  and  answered  shyly,  "Thank  you." 

Edie  noted  his  downcast  look  and  his  suppressed  sigh. 
"You  goose!"  she  said  afterward.  "Pray,  what  did  you 
expect?  Do  you  think  the  girl's  bound  to  jump  down 
your  throat  like  a  ripe  gooseberry?  If  she's  worth  win- 
ning, she's  worth  waiting  for.  A  woman  who  can  love  as 
Elsie  has  loved  can't  be  expected  to  dance  a  polka  at  ten 
minutes'  notice  on  the  mortal  remains  of  her  dead  self. 
But  then,  a  woman  who  can  love  as  Elsie  has  loved  must 
love  in  the  end  a  man  worth  loving. — I  don't  say  I've 
a  very  high  opinion  of  you  in  other  ways,  Warren.  As  a 
man  of  business,  you're  simply  nowhere;  you  wouldn't 
have  sold  those  three  pictures  in  London,  you  know,  last 
autumn  if  it  hadn't  been  for  your  amiable  sister's  persist- 
ent touting;  but  as  a  marrying  man,  I  consider  you're  Ai, 
eighteen  carat,  a  perfect  hundred-guinea  prize  in  the  mat- 
rimonial market." 


234  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

Before  the  end  of  the  winter,  Elsie  and  Warren  found 
they  had  settled  down  into  a  quiet  brotherly  and  sisterly 
relation,  which  to  Elsie's  mind  left  nothing  further  to  be 
desired;  while  to  Warren  it  seemed  about  as  bad  an 
arrangement  as  the  nature  of  things  could  easily  have 
permitted. 

"It's  a  pity  he  can't  sell  his  pictures  better,"  Elsie  said 
one  day  confidentially  to  Edie.  "He  does  so  deserve  it; 
they're  really  lovely.  Every  day  I  watch  him,  I  find  new 
points  in  them.  I  begin  to  see  now  how  really  great  they 
are." 

"It  is  a  pity,"  Edie  answered  mischievously.  "He  must 
devote  his  energies  to  the  harmless  necessary  pot-boiler. 
For  until  he  finds  his  market,  my  dear,  he'll  never  be  well 
enough  off  to  marry." 

"Oh,  Edie,  I  couldn't  bear  to  think  he  should  sink  to 
pot-boiling.  And  yet  I  should  like  to  see  him  married 
some  day  to  some  nice  good  girl  who'd  make  him  happy," 
Elsie  assented  innocently. 

"So  should  I,  my  child,"  Edie  rejoined  with  a  knowing 
smile.  "And  what's  more,  I  mean  to  arrange  it  too.  I 
mean  to  put  him  in  a  proper  position  for  asking  the  nice 
good  girl's  consent.  Next  summer  and  autumn,  I  shall 
conspire  with  Mr.  Hatherley  to  boom  him." 

"To  what?"  Elsie  asked,  puzzled. 

"To  boom  him,  my  dear.  B,  double  o,  m — boom  him. 
A  most  noble  verb,  imported,  I  believe,  with  the  pickled 
pork  and  the  tinned  peaches,  direct  from  Chicago.  To 
boom  means,  according  to  my  private  dictionary,  to  force 
into  sudden  and  almost  explosive  notoriety. — That's  what 
I'm  going  to  do  with'  Warren.  I  intend,'  by  straightfor- 
ward and  unblushing  advertising — in  short  by  log-rolling 
— to  make  him  go  down  next  season  with' the  money- 
getting  classes  as  a  real  live  painter.  Their  gold  shall 
pour  itself  into  Warren's  pocket.  If  he  wasn't  a  genius, 
I  should  think  it  wrong;  but  as  I  know  he  is  one,  why 
shouldn't  I  boom  him?" 

"Why  not,  indeed?"  Elsie  answered  all  unconscious. 
"And  then  he  might  marry  that  nice  good  girl  of  yours,  if 
he  can  get  her  to  take  him." 

"The  nice  good  girl  will  have  to  take  him,"  Edie  replied 


ART  AT  HOME.  235 

with  a  nod.  "When  I  puts  my  foot  down,  I  puts  it  down. 
And  I've  put  it  down  that  Warren  shall  succeed,  finan- 
cially, artistically,  and  matrimonially.  So  there's  nothing 
more  to  be  said  about  it." 

And  indeed  when  Warren  returned  to  England  in  the 
spring,  to  be  boomed,  it  was  with  distinct  permission  this 
time  from  Elsie  to  write  to  her  as  often  and  as  much  as 
he  wanted — in  a  strictly  fraternal  and  domestic  manner. 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 
ART  AT  HOME. 

That  same  winter  made  a  sudden  change  in  Hugh  Mas- 
singer's  financial  position.  He  found  himself  the  actual 
and  undoubted  possessor  of  the  Manor  of  Whitestrand. 
Winter  always  tried  Mrs.  Meysey.  Like  the  bulk  of  us 
nowadays,  her  weak  points  were  lungy.  Of  late,  she 
had  suffered  each  season  more  and  more  from  bronchitis, 
and  Hugh  had  done  his  disinterested  best  to  persuade  her 
to  go  abroad  to  some  warmer  climate.  His  solicitude 
for  her  health,  indeed,  was  truly  filial,  and  not  without 
reason.  If  she  chose  Madeira  or  Algiers  or  Egypt,  for 
example,  she  would  at  least  be  well  out  of  her  new  son's 
way  for  six  months  of  the  year;  and  Hugh  was  beginning 
to  realize,  as  time  went  on,  a  little  too  acutely  that  he  had 
married  the  estate  and  manor  of  Whitestrand  with  all  its 
incumbrances,  a  mother-in-law  included;  while  if,  on 
the  other  hand,  she  preferred  Nice  or  Cannes  or  Pau,  or 
even  Florence,  or  any  nearer  continental  resort,  they 
would  at  any  rate  have  an  agreeable  place  to  visit  her  in, 
if  they  were  suddenly  summoned  away  to  her  side  by  the 
telegraphic  calls  of  domestic  piety.  But  Mrs.  Meysey, 
true  metal  to  the  core,  wouldn't  hear  of  wintering  away 
from  Suffolk.  She  clung  to  Whitestrand  with  East 
Anglian  persistence.  Where  was  one  better  off,  indeed, 
than  in  one's  own  house,  with  one's  own  people  to  tend 
and  comfort  one?  If  the  March  winds  blew  hard  at  the 
Hall,  were  there  not  deadly  mistrals  at  Mentone  and 


23G  THIS  MORTAL,  C  OIL,. 

gusts  of  foggy  Fohn  at  dreary  Davos  Platz?  If  you 
gained  in  the  daily  tale  of  registered  sunshine  at  Hyeres 
or  at  Bordighera,'  did  not  a  superabundance  of  olive  oil 
diversify  the  stew  at  the  table-d'hote,  and  a  fatal  suspicion 
of  Italian  garlic  poison  the  fricandeau  of  the  second  break- 
fast? Mrs.  Meysey,  in  her  British  mood,  would  stand  by 
Suffolk  bravely  while  she  lived;  and  if  the  hard  gray 
weather  killed  her  at  last,  as  it  killed  its  one  literary  apolo- 
gist in  our  modern  England,  she  would  acquiesce  in  the 
decrees  of  Fate,  and  be  buried,  like  a  Briton,  by  her  hus- 
band's side  in  Whitestrand  churchyard.  Elizabethan 
Meyseys  of  the  elder  stock — in  frilled  ruffs  and  stiff 
starched  headdresses — smiled  down  upon  her  resolution 
from  their  niched  tomb  in  Whitestrand  church  every  Sun- 
day morning:  never  should  it  be  said  that  this,  their  de- 
generate latter-day  representative,  ran  away  from  the  east 
winds  of  dear  old  England  to  bask  in  the  sunlight  at 
Malaga  or  Seville,  among  the  descendants  of  the  godless 
Armada  sailors,  from  whose  wreckage  and  pillage  those 
stout  old  squires  had  built  up  the  timbers  of  that  very  Hall 
which  she  herself  still  worthily  inhabited 

So  Mrs.  Meysey  stopped  sturdily  at  home ;  and  the  east 
wind  wreaked  its  vengeance  upon  her  in  its  wonted  fash- 
ion. Early  in  March,  Winifred  was  summoned  by  tele- 
gram from  town:  "Come  at  once.  Much  worse.  May 
not  live  long.  Bring  Hugh  with  you."  And  three  weeks 
later,  another  fresh  grave  rose  eloquent  in  Whitestrand 
churchyard ;  and  the  carved  and  painted  Elizabethan  Mey- 
seys, smiling  as  placidly  as  ever  on  the  empty  seat  in  the 
pew  below,  looked  forward  with  confidence  to  the  proxi- 
mate addition  of  another  white  marble  tablet  with  a  black 
epitaph  to  the  family  collection  in  the  Whitestrand  chancel. 

The  moment  was  a  specially  trying  one  for  Winifred.  A 
month  later,  a  little  heir  to  the  Whitestrand  estates  was 
expected  to  present  himself  on  the  theater  of  existence. 
When  he  actually  arrived  upon  the  stage  of  life,  however, 
poor  frail  little  waif,  it  was  only  just  to  be  carried  across  it 
once,  a  speechless  supernumerary,  in  a  nurse's  arms,  and  to 
breathe  his  small  soul  out  in  a  single  gasp  before  he  had 
even  learned  how  to  cry  aloud  like  an  English  baby.  This 
final  misfortune,  coming  close  on  the  heels  of  all  the  rest, 


ART  AT  HOME.  237 

broke  down  poor  Winifred's  health  terribly.  A  new  chap- 
ter of  life  opened  out  before  her.  She  ceased  to  be  the 
sprightly,  lively  girl  she  had  once  been.  She  felt  herself 
left  alone  in  the  big  wide  world,  with  a  husband  who,  as 
she  was  now  beginning  to  suspect,  had  married  her  for  the 
sake  of  her  money  only,  while  his  heart  was  still  fixed 
upon  no  one  but  Elsie.  Poor  lonely  child :  it  was  a  dismal 
outlook  for  her.  Her  soul  was  sad.  She  couldn't  bear 
to  brazen  things  out  any  longer  in  London — to  smile  and 
smile  and  be  inwardly  miserable.  She  must  come  back 
now,  she  said  plaintively,  to  her  own  people  in  dear  old 
Suffolk. 

To  Hugh,  this  proposition  was  simply  unendurable. 
He  shrank  from  Whitestrand  with  a  deadly  shrinking. 
Everything  about  the  estate  he  had  made  his  OWP  was 
utterly  distasteful  to  him  and  fraught  with  horror.  The 
house,  the  grounds,  the  garden,  the  river,  above  all  that 
tragic,  accusing  poplar,  were  so  many  perpetual  reminders 
of  his  crime  and  his  punishment.  Yet  he  saw  it  would  be 
useless  to  oppose  Winifred's  wish"  in  such  a  matter — the 
whole  idea  was  so  simple,  so  natural.  A  squire  ought  to 
live  on  his  own  land,  of  course ;  he  ought  to  occupy  the 
ancestral  Hall  where  his  predecessors  have  dwelt  before 
him  for  generations.  Had  not  he  himself  fulminated  in 
his  time  in  the  gorgeous  periods  of  the  "Morning  Tele- 
phone" against  the  crying  sin  and  shame  of  absenteeism? 
But  if  he  went  there,  he  could  only  go  on  three  conditions. 
The  Hall  itself  must  be  remodeled,  redecorated,  and  re- 
furnished throughout,  till  its  own  inhabitants  would 
hardly  recognize  it;  the  grounds  must  be  replanted  in 
accordance  with  his  own  cultivated  and  refined  taste;  and 
last  of  all — though  this  he  did  not  venture  to  mention  to 
Winifred — by  fair  means  or  by  foul,  the  Whitestrand  pop- 
lar— that  hateful  tree — must  be  leveled  to  the  soil,  and 
its  very  place  must  know  it  no  longer.  For  the  first  two 
conditions  he  stipulated  outright:  the  third  he  locked  up 
for  the  present  quietly  in  the  secret  recesses  of  his  own 
bosom. 

Winifred,  for  her  part,  was  not  wholly  averse,  either, 
to  the  remodeling  of  Whitestrand.  The  house,  she  ad- 
mitted, was  old-fashioned  and  dowdy.  Its  antiquity  went 


238  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

back  only  to  the  "bad  period."  After  the  aesthetic  draw- 
ing-rooms of  the  Cheyne  Row  set,  she  confessed  to  her- 
self, grudgingly — though  not  to  Hugh — that  the  blue 
satin  and  whitey-gold  paint  of  the  dear  old  place  seemed 
perhaps  just  a  trifle  dingy  and  antiquated.  There  were 
tiny  cottages  at  Hampstead  and  Kensington  that  White- 
strand  Hall  could  never  reasonably  expect  to  emulate. 
She  didn't  object  to  the  alterations,  she  said,  so  long 
as  the  original  Elizabethan  front  was  left  scrupulously 
intact,  and  no  incongruous  meddling  was  allowed  with 
the  oaken  wainscot  and  carved  ceiling  of  the  Jacobean 
vestibule.  But  where,  she  asked,  with  sound  Suffolk 
common-sense  was  the  money  for  all  these  improvements 
to  come  from?  A  season  of  falling  rents,  and  encroaching 
sea,  and  shifting  sands,  and  agricultural  depression, 
with  Hessian  fly  threatening  the  crops,  and  obscure  bac- 
teria fighting  among  themselves  for  possession  of  the 
cattle,  was  surely  not  the  best  chosen  time  in  the  world  for 
a  country  gentleman  to  enlarge  and  complete  and  beautify 
his  house  in. 

"Pooh!"  Hugh  answered,  in  one  of  his  heroically  san- 
guine moods,  as  he  sat  in  the  dining-room  with  his  back 
to  the  window  and  the  hated  poplar,  and  his  face  to  the 
ground-plans  and  estimates  upon  the  table  before  him. 
"I  mean  to  go  up  to  town  for  the  season  always,  and  to 
keep  up  my  journalistic  connection  in  a  general  way;  and 
in  time,  no  doubt,  I  shall  begin  to  get  work  at  the  bar  also. 
I  shall  make  friends  assiduously  with  what  a  playful  phrase 
absurdly  describes  as  'the  lower  branch  of  the  profession.' 
I  shall  talk  my  nicest  to  every  dull  solicitor  I  meet  any- 
where, and  do  my  politest  to  the  dull  solicitor's  stupid 
wife  and  plain  daughters.  I'll  fetch  them  ices  at  other 
people's  At  Homes,  and  shower  on  them  tickets  for  all 
the  private  views  we  don't  care  about,  and  all  the  first 
nights  at  uninteresting  theaters.  That's  the  way  to  ad- 
vance in  the  profession.  Sooner  or  later,  I'll  get  on  at 
the  bar.  Meanwhile,  as  the  estate's  fortunately  unincum- 
bered,  and  there's  none  of  that  precious  nonsense  about 
entail,  or  remainders,  or  settlements,  or  so  forth,  we  can 
raise  the  immediate  cash  for  our  present  need  on  short 
mortgages." 


ART  AT  HOME.  239 

"I  hate  the  very  name  of  mortgages,"  Winifred  cried 
impatiently.  "They  suggest  brokers'  men  and  bailiffs, 
and  bankruptcy  and  beggary." 

"And  everything  else  that  begins  with  a  B,"  Hugh  con- 
tinued, smiling  a  placid  smile  to  himself,  and  vaguely 
reminiscent  of  "Alice  in  Wonderland."  "Why  with  a 
B!"  Alice  said  musingly. — "Why  not?"  said  the  March 
Hare. — Alice  was  silent. — ''Now,  for  my  own  part,  I  con- 
fess, on  the  contrary,  Winifred,  to  a  certain  sentimental 
liking  for  the  mortgage  as  such,  viewed  in  the  abstract. 
It's  a  document  intimately  connected  with  the  landed 
interest  and  the  feudal  classes;  it  savors  to  my  mind 
of  broad  estates  and  haughty  aristocrats,  and  lordly  rent- 
rolls  and  a  baronial  ancestry.  I  will  admit  that  I  should 
feel  a  peculiar  pride  in  my  connection  with  Whitestrand 
if  I  felt  I  had  got  it  really  with  a  mortgage  on  it.  How 
proud  a  moment,  to  be  seized  of  a  mortgage!  The  poor, 
the  abject,  the  lowly,  and  the  landless  don't  go  in  heavily 
for  the  luxury  of  mortgages.  They  pawn  their  watches, 
or  raise  a  precarious  shilling  or  two  upon  the  temporary 
security  of  Sunday  suits,  kitchen  clocks,  and  second-hand 
flat-irons.  But  a  mortgage  is  an  eminently  gentlemanly 
form  of  impecuniosity.  Like  gout  and  the  lord-lieuten- 
ancy of  your  shire,  it's  incidental  to  birth  and  greatness. — 
Upon  my  word,  I'm  not  really  certain,  Winnie,  now  I 
come  to  think  upon  it,  that  a  gentleman's  house  is  ever 
quite  complete  without  a  History  of  England,  a  billiard 
table,  and  a  mortgage.  Unincumbered  estates  suggest 
Brummagem:  they  bespeak  the  vulgar  affluence  of  the 
rwuveau  rtche,  who  keeps  untold  gold  lying  idle  at  his 
bankers  on  purpose  to  spite  the  political  economists.  But 
a  loan  of  a  few  thousands,  invested  with  all  the  glamor  of 
deposited  title-deeds,  foreclosing,  engrossed  parchment, 
and  an  extremely  beautiful  and  elaborate  specimen  of  that 
charming  dialect,  conveyancers'  English,  carries  with  it 
an  air  of  antique  respectability  and  county  importance 
that  I  should  be  loath  to  forego,  even  if  I  happened  to 
have  the  cash  in  hand  otherwise  available,  for  carrying 
out  the  necessary  improvements." 

"But  how  shall  we  ever  pay  it  back?"  Winifred  asked, 
with  native  feminine  caution. 


840  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

Hugh  waved  his  hands  expansively  open.  When  he 
went  in  for  the  sanguine  he  did  it  thoroughly.  "One  thing 
at  a  time,  my  child,"  he  murmured  low.  "First  borrow; 
then  set  your  wits  to  work  to  look  around  for  a  means 
of  repayment. — In  the  desk  at  home  in  London  this  very 
moment  lies  an  immortal  epic,  worth  ten  thousand  pounds 
if  it's  worth  a  penny,  and  cheap  at  the  price  to  a  discern- 
ing purchaser.  Ormuz  and  Ind  are  perfect  East  Ends 
to  it.  It  teems  with  Golcondas  and  Big  Bonanzas.  In 
time  the  slow  world  must  surely  discover  that  this  Eng- 
land of  ours  incloses  a  great  live  poet.  The  blind  and 
battling  must  open  their  eyes  and  look  at  last  placidly 
about  them.  They'll  then  be  glad  to  buy  fifty  editions 
of  that  divine  strain,  van-ing  in  character  from  the  large 
paper  edition  de  luxe  in  antique  vellum  at  ten  guineas — 
five  hundred  copies  only  printed,  and  issued  to  subscribers 
upon  conditions  which  may  be  learned  on  application  at  all 
libraries — to  the  school  selection  at  popular  prices,  in- 
tended to  familiarize  the  ingenious  youth  of  this  nation 
with  the  choicest  thoughts  of  a  distinguished  and  high- 
minded  living  author. — Winnie,  I'm  tired  to  death  of 
hearing  people  say  when  I'm  introduced  to  them:  'Oh, 
Mr.  Massinger,  I've  often  wanted  to  ask,  are  you  descend- 
ed from  the  poet  Massinger?'  I  mean  the  time  to  arrive 
before  long  when  I  can  answer  them  plainly  with  a  bold 
face:  'No,  my  dear  sir,  or  madam,  I  am  not;  but  I  am 
the  poet  Massinger,  if  you  care  to  be  told  so.' — When 
that  time  comes,  we'll  pay  off  the  mortgages  and  build  a 
castle — in  Spain  or  elsewhere — with  the  balance  of  our 
fortune.  Meanwhile,  we  have  always  the  satisfaction  of 
knowing  that  nothing  on  earth  could  be  more  squire- 
archical  in  its  way  than  a  genuine  mortgage." 

"I'm  not  so  sure  as  I  once  was,  Hugh,  that  you'll  ever 
make  much  out  of  your  kind  of  poetry." 

"Of  course  not,  my  child;  because  now  I  happen  to  be 
only  your  husband.  A  prophet,  we  know  on  the  best  au- 
thority, is  not  without  honor,  et  cetera,  et  cetera.  But  I 
mean  to  make  my  mark  yet  for  all  that ;  ay,  and  to  make 
money  out  of  it,  too,  into  the  bargain." 

So,  in  the  end,  Winifred's  objections  were  overruled — 
since  this  was  not  a  matter  upon  which  that  young  lady 


ART  AT  HOME.  241 

felt  strongly — and  the  money  for  "improving  and  develop- 
ing the  estate,"  having  been  duly  raised  by  the  aid,  assist- 
ance, instrumentality,  or  mediation  of  that  fine  specimen 
of  conveyancers'  English  aforesaid,  to  which  Hugh  had 
so  touchingly  and  professionally  alluded,  a  fashionable 
architect  was  invited  down  from  town  at  once  to  inspect 
the  Hall  and  to  draw  up  plans  for  its  renovation  as  a  resi- 
dential mansion  of  the  most  modern  pattern. 

The  fashionable  architect,  after  his  kind,  performed  his 
work  well — and  expensively.  He  spared  himself  no  pains 
(and  Hugh  no  money)  on  rendering  the  Hall  a  perfect 
example  on  a  small  scale  of  the  best  Elizabethan  domestic 
architecture.  He  destroyed  ruthlessly  and  repaired  lav- 
ishly. He  put  mullions  to  the  windows,  and  pillars  to  the 
porch,  and  molded  ceilings  to  the  chief  reception-rooms, 
and  oaken  balustrades  to  either  side  of  the  wide  old  ram- 
bling Tudor  staircase.  He  rebuilt  whatever  Inigo  had 
defaced,  and  pulled  down  whatever  of  vile  and  shapeless 
Georgian  contractors  had  stolidly  added.  He  "restored" 
the  building  to  what  it  had  never  before  been :  a  fine  squat 
old-fashioned  country  mansion  of  the  low  wind-swept 
East  Anglian  type,  a  House  Beautiful  everywhere,  without 
and  within,  and  as  unlike  as  possible  to  the  dingy  Hall 
that  Hugh  Massinger  had  seen  and  mentally  discounte- 
nanced on  the  occasion  of  his  first  visit  to  Whitestrand. 
"You  give  an  architect  money  enough,"  says  Colonel  Silas 
Lapham  in  the  greatest  romance — bar  one — in  the  English 
language,  "and  he'll  build  you  a  fine  house  every  time." 
Hugh  Massinger  gave  his  architect  money  enough,  or  at 
least  credit  enough — which  comes  at  first  to  the  same 
thing — and  he  got  a  fine  house,  as  far  as  the  means  at  his 
disposal  went,  on  that  ugly  corner  of  flat  sandy  waste  at 
forsaken  Whitestrand. 

When  the  building  was  done  and  the  papering  finished, 
they  set  about  the  furnishing  proper.  And  here,  Wini- 
fred's taste  began  to  clash  with  Hugh's;  for  every  woman, 
though  she  may  eschew  ground-plans,  elevations,  and  esti- 
mates, has  at  least  distinct  ideas  of  her  own  on  the  im- 
portant question  of  internal  decoration.  The  new  Squire 
was  all  for  oriental  hangings..  Turkey  carpets,  Indian 
durrees,  and  Persian  tiling.  But  Mrs.  Massinger  would 


242  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

have  none  of  these  heathenish  gewgaws,  she  solemnly  de- 
clared; her  tastes  by  no  means  took  a  Saracenic  turn. 
Mr.  Hatherley  and  the  Cheyne  Row  men  would  make  fun 
of  her,  and  call  her  house  Liberty  Hall,  if  she  furnished 
it  throughout  with  such  Mussulman  absurdities.  For 
her  own  part,  she  renounced  Liberty  and  all  his  works: 
she  eschewed  everything  east  of  longitude  thirty  degrees: 
inlaid  coffee-tables  were  an  abomination  in  her  eyes; 
pierced  Arabic  lamps  roused  no  latent  enthusiasm:  the 
only  real  thing  in  decoration  was  Morris ;  and  on  Morris 
she  pinned  her  faith  unreservedly.  She  would  be  utterly 
utter.  She  had  a  Morris  carpet  and  Morris  curtains; 
white  ivory  paint  adorned  her  lop-sided  overmantels,  and 
red  De  Morgan  ware  with  opalescent  hues  ranged  in  long 
straight  rows  upon  her  pigeon-hole  cabinets.  To  Hugh's 
poetical  mind  this  was  all  too  plaguy  modern;  out  of 
keeping,  he  thought,  with  the  wide  oaken  staircase  and 
the  punctilious  Elizabethanism  of  the  eminent  architect's 
facade  and  ceilings.  Winifred,  however,  laughed  his 
marital  remonstrances  to  utter  scorn.  She  hated  an  up- 
holsterer's house,  she  said,  all  furnished  alike  from  end 
to  end  with  servile  adherence  to  historical  correctness. 
Such  Puritanical  purism  was  meant  for  slaves.  Why  pre- 
tend to  be  living  in  Elizabethan  England  or  Louis  Quinze 
France,  when  we're  really  vegetating,  as  we  all  know, 
in  the  marshy  wilds  of  nineteenth-century  Suffolk?  Let 
your  house  reflect  your  own  eclecticism — a  very  good 
phrase,  picked  up  from  a  modern  handbook  of  domestic 
decoration.  She  liked  a  little  individuality  and  lawless- 
ness of  purpose.  "Your  views,  you  know,  Hugh,"  she 
cried  with  the  ex  cathedra  conviction  of  a  woman  laying 
down  the  law  in  her  own  household,  "are  just  the  least 
little  bit  in  the  world  pedantic.  You  and  your  architect 
want  a  stiff  museum  of  Elizabethan  art.  It  may  be  silly 
of  me,  but  I  prefer  myself  a  house  to  live  in." 

"The  drawing-room  does  look  so  perfectly  lovely,' 
you  remember,"  Hugh  quoted  quietly  from  her  own  old 
letters.  :'  'We've  done  it  up  exactly  as  you  recommended, 
with  the  sage-green  plush  for  the  old  mantel-piece,  and 
a  red  Japanese  table  in  the  dark  corner;  and  I  really  think, 
now  I  see  the  effect,  your  taste's  simply  exquisite.  But 


ART  AT  HOME.  243 

then,  you  know,  what  else  can  you  expect  from  a  distin- 
guished poet!  You  always  do  everything  beautifully!' 
Can  you  recollect,  Mrs.  Massinger,  down  the  dim  abyss 
of  twelve  or  eighteen  months,  who  wrote  those  touching 
words,  and  to  whom  she  addressed  them?" 

"Ah,  that  was  all  very  fine  then,"  Winifred  answered 
with  a  pout,  arranging  Hugh's  Satsuma  jars  with  Jap- 
anesque irregularity  on  the  dining-room  overmantel. 
"But  you  see  that  was  before  I'd  been  about  much  in  Lon- 
don, and  noticed  how  other  people  smarten  up  their  rooms, 
and  formed  my  own  taste  in  the  matter  of  decoration.  I 
was  then  in  the  frankly  unsophisticated  state.  I'd  studied 
no  models.  I'd  never  seen  anything  beautiful  to  judge 
by." 

"You  were  then  Miss  Meysey,"  her  husband  answered, 
with  a  distant  cold  inflexion  of  voice.  "You're  now  Mrs. 
Hugh  de  Carteret  Massinger.  It's  that  that  makes  all  the 
difference,  you  know.  The  reason  there  are  so  many  dis- 
cordant marriages,  says  Dean  Swift,  with  more  truth  than 
politeness,  is  because  young  women  are  so  much  more 
occupied  in  weaving  nets  than  in  making  cages." 

"I  never  wove  nets  for  you,"  Winifred  cried  angrily. 

"Xor  made  cages  either,  it  seems,"  Hugh  answered 
with  provoking  calmness,  as  he  sauntered  off  by  himself, 
cigar  in  hand,  into  the  new  smoking-room. 

Their  intercourse  nowadays  generally  ended  in  such 
little  amenities.  They  were  beginning  to  conjugate  with 
alarming  frequency  that  verb  to  nag,  which  often  succeeds 
in  becoming  at  last  the  dominant  part  of  speech  in  conjugal 
conversation. 

One  portion  of  the  house  at  least,  Hugh  succeeded  in  • 
remodeling  entirely  to  his  own  taste,  and  that  was  the 
bedroom  which  had  once  been  Elsie's.  By  throwing  out 
a  large  round  bay  window,  mullioned  and  decorated  out 
of  all  recognition,  and  by  papering,  painting,  and  refur- 
nishing throughout  with  ostentatious  novelty  of  design 
and  detail,  he  so  completely  altered  the  appearance  of 
that  hateful  room  that  he  could  hardly  know  it  again  him- 
self for  the  same  original  square  chamber.  Moreover, 
that  he  might  never  personally  have  to  enter  it,  he  turned 
it  into  the  Married  Guest's  'Bedroom.  There  was  the 


244  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

Prophet's  Chamber  on  the  Wall  for  the  bachelor  visitors — 
a  pretty  little  attic  under  the  low  eaves,  furnished,  like 
the  Shunammite's,  with  "a  bed,  and  a  table,  and  a  stool, 
and  a  candlestick";  and  there  was  the  Maiden's  Bower 
on  the  first  floor,  for  th$  young  girls,  with  its  dainty  pale- 
green  wardrobe  and  Morris  cabinet;  and  there  was  the 
Blue  Room  for  the  prospective  heir,  whenever  that  hypo- 
thetical young  gentleman  from  parts  unknown  proceeded 
to  realize  himself  in  actual  humanity;  so  Hugh  ventured 
to  erect  the  remodelled  chamber  next  door  to  his  own  into 
a  Married  Guest's  Room,  where  he  himself  need  never  go 
to  vex  his  soul  with  unholy  reminiscences.  When  he 
could  look  up  at  the  Hall  with  a  bold  face  from  the  grass 
plot  in  front,  and  see  no  longer  that  detested  square  win- 
dow, with  the  wistaria  festooning  itself  so  luxuriantly 
round  the  corners,  he  felt  he  might  really  perhaps  after  all 
live  at  Whitestrand.  For  the  wistaria,  too,  that  grand  old 
climber,  with  its  thick  stem,  was  ruthlessly  sacrificed ;  and 
in  its  place  on  the  left  of  the  porch,  Hugh  planted  a  fast- 
growing,  new-fangled  ampelopsis,  warranted  quickly  to 
arape  and  mantel  the  raw  stone  surfaces,  and  still  further 
metamorphose  the  front  of  the  Hall  from  what  it  had  once 
been — when  dead  Elsie  lived  there.  All  was  changed, 
without  and  within.  The  Hall  was  now  fit  for  a  gentle- 
man to  dwell  in. 

Only  one  eyesore  still  remained  to  grieve  and  annoy 
him.  The  Whitestrand  poplar  yet  faced  and  confronted 
him  wherever  he  looked.  It  turned  him  sick.  It  poi- 
soned Suffolk  for  him.  The  poplar  must  go!  He  could 
never  endure  it.  Life  would  indeed  be  a  living  death, 
in  sight  for  ever  of  that  detested  and  grinning  memorial. 
For  it  grinned  at  him  often  from  the  gnarled  and  hollow 
trunk.  A  human  face  seemed  to  laugh  out  upon  him 
from  its  shapeless  boles — a  human  face,  fiendish  in  it? 
joy,  with  a  carbuncled  nose  and  grinning  mouth.  He 
hated  to  see  it,  it  grinned  so  hideously.  So  he  set  his 
wits  to  work  to  devise  a  way  of  getting  rid  of  that  poplar, 
root  and  branch,  without  unnecessarily  angering  Winifred. 


REHEARSAL.  245 

s 

CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

REHEARSAL. 

Meanwhile,  when  the  house  was  all  finished  and  deco- 
rated throughout,  Hugh  turned  his  thoughts  once  more, 
on  fame  intent,  to  his  great  forthcoming  volume  of  verses. 
Since  he  had  married  Winifred,  he  had  published  little, 
eschewing  journalism  and  such  small  tasks  as  unworthy 
the  dignity  of  accomplished  squiredom;  but  he  had  been 
working  hard  from  time  to  time  at  polishing  and  repolish- 
ing  his  magnum  opus,  "A  Life's  Philosophy" — a  lengthy 
poem  in  a  metre  of  his  own,  more  or  less  novel,  and  em- 
bodying a  number  of  moral  reflections,  more  or  less  trite, 
on  the  youth,  adolescence,  maturity,  and  decrepitude  of 
the  human  subject.  It  exactly  suited  Mr.  Matthew  Ar- 
nold's well-known  definition,  being,  in  fact,  an  exhaustive 
criticsm  of  life,  as  Hugh  Massinger  himself  had  found  it. 
He  meant  to  print  it  in  time  for  the  autumn  book-season. 
It  was  the  great  stake  of  his  life,  and  he  was  confident  of 
success.  He  had  worked  it  up  with  ceaseless  toil  to  what 
seemed  to  himself  the  highest  possible  pitch  of  artistic 
handicraft;  and  he  rolled  his  own  sonorous  rhymes  over 
and  over  again  with  infinite  satisfaction  upon  his  literary 
palate,  pronouncing  them  all,  on  impartial  survey,  of  most 
excellent  flavor.  Nothing  in  life,  indeed,  can  be  more 
deceptive  than  the  poetaster's  confidence  in  his  own  pro- 
ductions. He  mistakes  familiarity  for  smoothness  of  ring, 
and  a  practiced  hand  for  genius  and  originality.  It  is 
his  fate  always  to  find  his  own  lines  absolutely  perfect;  in 
which  cheerful  personal  creed  the  rest  of  the  world  mostly 
fails  altogether  to  agree  with  him. 

In  such  a  self-congratulatory  and  hopeful  mood,  Hugh 
sat  one  morning  in  the  new  drawing-room,  holding  a  quire 
of  closely  written  sermon-paper,  stitched  together,  in  his 
hand,  and  gazing  affectionately  with  parental  pride  at  his 
last-born  stanzas.  Winifred  had  only  returned  yesterday 
from  a  shopping  expedition  up  to  town,  and  was  idling 
away  a  day  in  rest  and  repair  after  her  unwonted  exertion 
among  the  crowded  bazaars  of  the  modern  Bagdad.  So 


246  THIS  MORTAL,  COLL. 

Hugh  leaned  back  in  his  chair  at  his  ease,  and,  seized  with 
the  sudden  thirst  for  an  audience,  began  to  pour  forth  in 
her  ear  in  his  rotund  manner  the  final  finished  introduc- 
tory prelude  to  his  "Life's  Philosophy."  His  wife, 
propped  up  on  the  pillows  of  the  sofa  and  lolling  carelessly, 
listened  and  smiled  as  he  read  and  read,  with  somewhat 
sceptical  though  polite  indifference. 

"Let  me  see,  where  had  I  got  to?"  Hugh  went  on  once, 
after  one  of  her  frequent  and  trying  critical  interruptions. 
"You  put  me  out  so,  Winnie,  with  your  constant  fault- 
finding! I  can't  recollect  how  far  I'd  read  to  you." 

"  'Begotten  unawares :'  now  go  ahead,"  Winifred  an- 
swered carelessly — as  carelessly  as  though  it  was  some 
other  fellow's  poems  he  had  been  pouring  forth  to  her. 

"'Or  bastard  offspring  of  unconscious  nature,  Begot- 
ten unawares,' "  Hugh  repeated  pompously,  looking  back 
with  a  loving  eye  at  his  much-admired  manuscript.  "Now 
listen  to  the  next  good  bit,  Winifred;  it's  really  im- 
pressive.— 


XXXII. 

"When  chaos  slowly  set  to  sun  or  planet, 

And  molten  masses  hardened  into  earth; 
When  primal  force  wrought  out  on  sea  and  granite 

The  wondrous  miracle  of  living  birth; 
Did  mightier  Mind,  in  clouds  of  glory  hidden, 

Breathe  power  through  its  limb  to  feel  and  know, 
Or  sentience  spring,  spontaneous  and  unbidden, 

With  feeble  steps  and  slow? 


XXXIII. 

"Are  sense  and  thought  but  parasites  of  being? 

Did  Nature  mold  our  limbs  to  act  and  move, 
But  some  strange  chance  endow  our  eyes  with  seeing, 

Our  nerves  with  feeling,  and  our  hearts  with  love? 
Since  all  alone  we  stand,  alone  discerning 

Sorrow  from  joy,  self  from  the  things  without; 
While  blind  fate  tramples  on  the  spirit's  yearning, 

And  floods  our  souls  with  doubt. 


REHEARSAL.  847 

XXXIV. 

"This  very  tree,  whose  life  is  our  life's  sister, 

We  know  not  if  the  ichor  in  her  veins 
Thrill  with  fierce  joy  when  April  dews  have  kissed  her, 

Or  shrink  in  anguish  from  October  rains; 
We  search  the  mighty  world  above  and  under, 

Yet  nowhere  find  the  soul  we  fain  would  find; 
Speech  in  the  hollow  rumbling  of  the  thunder, 

Words  in  the  whispering  wind. 


XXXV. 

"We  yearn  for  brotherhood  with  lake  and  mountain, 

Our  conscious  soul  seeks  conscious  sympathy; 
Nymphs  in  the  coppice,  Naiads  in  the  fountain, 

Gods  on  the  craggy  height  of  roaring  sea. 
We  find  but  soulless  sequences  of  matter; 

Fact  linked  to  fact  in  adamantine  rods; 
Eternal  bonds  of  former  sense  and  latter; 

Dead  laws  for  living  gods. 


"There,  Winifred,  what  do  you  say  to  that  now?  Isn't 
that  calculated  to  take  the  wind  out  of  some  of  these  pre- 
tentious fellows'  sails?  What  do  you  think  of  it?" 

"Think?"  Winifred  answered,  pursing  up  her  lips  into  an 
expression  of  the  utmost  professional  connoisseurship..  "I 
think  'granite'  doesn't  rhyme  in  the  English  language 
with  'planet' ;  and  I  consider  'sentience'  is  a  horribly  prosaic 
word  of  its  sort  to  introduce  into  serious  poetry. — What's 
that  stuff  about  liquor,  too?  'We  know  not  if  the  liquor 
in  her  something.'  I  don't  like  'liquor.'  It's  not  good: 
bar-room  English,  only  fit  for  a  public-house  production." 

"I  didn't  say  'liquor,'"  Hugh  cried  indignantly.  "I 
said  'ichor,'  which  of  course  is  a  very  different  matter. 
'We  know  not  if  the  ichor  in  her  veins.'  Ichor's  the  blood 
of  the  gods  in  Homer.  That's  the  worst  of  reading  these 
things  to  women:  classical  allusion's  an  utter  blank  to 
them. — If  you've  got  nothing  better  than  that  to  object, 
have  the  kindness,  please,  not  to  interrupt  me." 

Winifred  closed  her  lips  with  a  sharp  snap;  while  Hugh 


248  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

went  on,  nothing  abashed,  with  the  same  sonorous  metre- 
marked  mouthing  — 


XXXVI. 

"The7  care  not  any  whit  for  pain  or  pleasure 

That  seem  to  men  the  sum  and  end  of  all. 
Dumb  force  and  barren  number  are  their  measure: 

What  can  be,  shall  be,  though  the  great  world  fall. 
They  take  no  heed  of  man,  or  man's  deserving, 

Reck  not  what  happy  lives  they  make,  or  mar, 
Work  out  their  fatal  will,  unswerved,  unswerving, 

And  know  not  that  they  are. 

"Now,  what  do  you  say  to  that,  Winifred  Isn't  it  just 
hunky?" 

"I  don't  like  interrupting,"  Winifred  snapped  out  sav- 
agely. "You  told  me  not  to  interrupt,  except  for  a  good 
and  sufficient  reason." 

"Well,  don't  be  nasty,"  Hugh  put  in,  half  smiling. 
"This  is  business,  you  know — a  matter  of  public  apprecia- 
tion— and  I  want  your  criticism:  it  all  means  money. 
Criticism  from  anybody,  no  matter  whom,  is  always  worth 
at  least  something." 

"Oh,  thank  you,  so  much.  That  is  polite  of  you.  Then 
if  you  want  criticism,  no  matter  from  whom,  I  should  say 
I  fail  to  perceive,  myself,  the  precise  difference  you  mean 
to  suggest  between  the  two  adjectives  'unswerved'  and  'un- 
swerving.' To  the  untutored  intelligence  of  a  mere 
woman,  to  whom  classical  allusion's  an  utter  blank,  they 
seem  to  say  exactly  the  same  thing  twice  over." 

"No,  no,"  Hugh  answered,  getting  warm  in  self-defense. 
"  'Unswerved'  is  passive ;  'unswerving'  is  active,  or  at  least 
middle:  the  one  means  that  they  swerve  themselves;  the 
other,  that  somebody  or  something  else  swerves  them." 

"You  do  violence  to  the  genius  of  the  English  lan- 
guage," Winifred  remarked  curtly.  "I  may  not  be  ac- 
quainted with  Latin  and  Greek,  but  I  talk  at  least  my 
mother-tongue.  Are  you  going  to  print  nothing  but  this 
great,  long,  dreary  incomprehensible  'Life's  Philosophy 
in  your  new  volume?" 

"I  shall  make  it  up  mainly  with  that,"  Hugh  answered, 


REHEARSAL.  249 

crestfallen,  at  so  obvious  a  failure  favorably  to  impress 
the  domestic  critic.  "But  I  shall  also  eke  out  the  title- 
piece  with  a  lot  of  stray  occasional  verses — the  'Funeral 
Ode  for  Gambetta,'  for  example,  and  plenty  of  others 
that  I  haven't  read  you.  Some  of  them  seem  to  me  tolera- 
bly successful."  He  was  growing  modest  before  the  face 
of  her  unflinching  criticism. 

"Read  me  'Gambetta,'"  Winifred  said  with  quiet  im- 
periousness.  "I'll  see  if  I  like  that  any  better  than  all  this 
foolish  maundering  'Philosophy.' " 

Hugh  turned  over  his  papers  for  the  piece  "by  request," 
and  after  some  searching  among  quires  and  sheets,  came 
at  last  upon  a  clean-written  copy  of  his  immortal  threnody. 
He  began  reading  out  the  lugubrious  lines  in  a  sufficiently 
grandiose  and  sepulchral  voice.  Winifred  listened  with 
careless  attention,  as  to  a  matter  little  worthy  her  sublime 
consideration.  Hugh  cleared  his  throat  and  rang  out 
magniloquently — 

"She  sits  once  more  upon  her  ancient  throne, 

The  fair  Republic  of  our  steadfast  vows: 

A  Phrygian  bonnet  binds  her  queenly  brows; 
Athwart  her  neck  her  knotted  hair  is  blown. 
A  hundred  cities  nestle  in  her  lap, 

Girt  round  their  stately  locks  with  mural  crowns: 
The  folds  of  her  imperial  robe  enwrap 

A  thousand  lesser  towns." 


"'Mural  crowns'  is  good,"  Winifred  murmured  satiri- 
cally :  "it  reminds  one  so  vividly  of  the  stone  statues  in  the 
Place  de  la  Concorde." 

Hugh  took  no  notice  of  her  intercalary  criticism.  He 
went  on  with  ten  or  twelve  stanzas  more  of  the  same 
bombastic,  would-be  sublime  character,  and  wound  up 
at  last  in  thunderous  tones  with  a  prophetic  outburst  as  to 
the  imagined  career  of  some  future  Gambetta — himself 
possibly — 


"He  still  shall  guide  us  toward  the  distant  goal; 
Calm  with  unerring  tact  our  weak  alarms; 
Train  all  our  youth  in  skill  of  manly  arms, 
And  knit  our  sires  in  unity  of  soul: 


250  THIS  MORTAL  COIL,. 

Till  bursting  iron  bars  and  gates  of  brass 
Our  own  Republic  stretch  her  arm  again 

To  raise  the  weeping  daughters  of  Alsace, 
And  lead  thee  home,  Lorraine." 

"Well,  what  do  you  think  of  that,  Winnie?"  he  asked 
at  last  triumphantly,  with  the  air  of  a  man  who  has  trotted 
out  his  best  war-horse  for  public  inspection  and  has  no  fear 
of  the  effect  he  is  producing. 

"Think?"  Winifred  answered.  ^  "Why,  I  think,  Hugh, 
that  if  Swinburne  had  never  written  his  Ode  to  Victor 
Hugo,  you  would  never  have  written  that  Funeral  March 
for  your  precious  Gambetta." 

Hugh  bit  his  lip  in  bitter  silence.  The  criticism  was 
many  times  worse  than  harsh :  it  was  true ;  and  he  knew  it. 
But  a  truthful  critic  is  the  most  galling  of  all  things. 

"Well,  surely,  Winifred,"  he  cried  at  last,  after  a  long 
pouse,  "you  think  those  other  lines  good,  don't  you?" — 

"And  when  like  some  fierce  whirlwind  through  the  land 

The  wrathful  Teuton  swept,  he  only  dared 
To  hope  and  act  when  every  heart  and  hand, 
But  his  alone,  despaired." 

"My  dear  Hugh,"  Winifred  answered  candidly,  "don't 
you  see  in  your  own  heart  that  all  this  sort  of  thing  may 
be  very  well  in  its  own  way,  but  it  isn't  original — it  isn't 
inspiration ;  it  isn't  the  true  sacred  fire :  it's  only  an  echo. 
Echoes  do  admirably  for  the  young  beginner;  but  in  a 
man  of  your  age — for  you're  getting  on  now — we  expect 
something  native  and  idiosyncratic. — I  think  Mr.  Hath- 
erley  called  it  idiosyncratic. — You  know  Mr.  Hatherley 
said  to  me  once  you  would  never  be  a  poet.  You  have 
too  good  a  memory.  'Whenever  Massinger  sits  down  at 
his  desk  to  write  about  anything,'  he  said  in  his  quiet  way, 
'he  remembers  such  a  perfect  flood  of  excellent  things 
other  people  have  written  about  the  same  subject,  that 
he's  absolutely  incapable  of  originality.'  And  the  more 
I  see  of  your  poetry,  dear,  the  more  do  I  see  that  Mr. 
Hatherley  was  right — right  beyond  question  You're  clev- 
er enough,  but  you  know  you're  not  original." 


REHEARSAL.  251 

Hugh  answered  her  never  a  single  word.  To  such  a 
knock-down  blow  as  that,  any  answer  at  all  is  clearly  im- 
possible. He  only  muttered  something  very  low  about 
casting  one's  pearls  before  some  creature  inaudible. 

Presently  Winifred  spoke  again.  "Let's  go  out,"  she 
said,  rising  from  the  sofa,  "and  sit  by  the  sea  on  the  roots 
of  the  poplar." 

At  the  word,  Hugh  flung  down  the  manuscript  in  a 
heap  on  the  ground  with  a  stronger  expression  than  Wini- 
fred had  ever  before  heard  fall  from  his  lips.  "I  hate  the 
poplar!"  he  said  angrily;  "I  detest  the  poplar!  I  won't 
have  the  poplar!  Nothing  on  earth  will  induce  me  to  sit 
by  the  poplar!" 

"How  cross  you  are!"  Winifred  cried  with  a  frown. 
"You  jump  at  me  as  if  you'd  snap  my  head  off!  And  all 
just  because  I  didn't  like  your  verses. — Very  well  then; 
I'll  go  and  sit  there  alone. — I  can  amuse  myself,  fortunate- 
ly, without  your  help.  I've  got  Mr.  Hatherley's  clever 
article  in  this  month's  'Contemporary.' " 

That  evening,  as  they  sat  together  silently  in  the  draw- 
ing-room, Winifred  engaged  in  the  feminine  amusement 
of  casting  admiring  glances  at  her  own  walls,  and  Hugh 
poring  deep  over  a  serious-looking  book,  Winifred 
glanced  over  at  him  suddenly  with  a  sigh,  and  murmured 
half  aloud:  "After  all,  really,  I  don't  think  much  of  it" 

"Much  of  what?"  Hugh  asked,  still  bending  over  the 
book  he  was  anxiously  consulting. 

"Why,  of  that  gourd  I  brought  home  from  town  yes- 
terday. You  know  Mrs.  Walpole's  got  a  gourd  in  her 
drawing-room;  and  every  time  I  went  into  the  vicarage 
I  said  to  myself:  'Oh,  how  lovely  it  is!  How  exquisite! 
How  foreign-looking!  If  only  I  had  a  gourd  like  that, 
now,  I  think  life  would  be  really  endurable.  It  gives  the 
last  touch  of  art  to  the  picture.  Our  new  drawing-room 
would  look  just  perfection  with  such  a  gourd  as  hers  to 
finish  the  wall  with/  Well,  I  saw  the  exact  counterpart  of 
that  very  gourd  the  day  before  yesterday  at  a  shop  in  Bond 
Street.  I  bought  it,  and  brought  it  home  with  exceeding 
great  joy.  I  thought  I  should  then  be  quite  happy.^  I 
hung  it  up  on  the  wall  to  try,  this  morning.  And  sitting 
here  all  evening,  looking  at  it  with  my  head  first  on 


252  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

one  side  and  then  on  the  other,  I've  said  to  myself  a  thou- 
sand times  over:  'It  doesn't  look  one  bit  like  Mrs.  Wai- 
pole's.  After  all,  I  don't  know  that  I'm  so  much  happier, 
now  I've  got  it,  than  I  was  before  I  had  a  gourd  of  my 
own  at  all  to  look  at." 

Hugh  groaned.  The  unconscious  allegory  was  far  too 
obvious  in  its  application  not  to  sink  into  the  very  depths 
of  his  soul.  He  turned  back  to  his  book,  and  sighed  in- 
wardly to  think  for  what  a  feeble,  unsatisfactory  shadow 
of  a  gourd  he  had  sacrifice-d  his  own  life — not  to  speak  of 
Winifred's  and  Elsie's. 

By-and-by  Winifred  rose  and  crossed  the  room.  ''What's 
that  you  are  studying  so  intently?"  she  asked,  with  a  sus- 
picious glance  at  the  book  in  his  fingers. 

Hugh  hesitated,  and  seemed  half  inclined  for  a  moment 
to  shut  the  book  with  a  bang  and  hide  it  away  from  her. 
Then  he  made  up  his  mind  with  a  fresh  resolve  to  brazen 
it  out.  "Gordon's  'Electricity  and  Magnetism,' "  he  an- 
swered quietly,  as  unabashed  as  possible,  holding  the  vol- 
ume half-closed  with  his  forefinger  at  the  page  he  had 
just  hunted  up.  "I'm — I'm  interested  at  present  to  some 
extent  in  the  subject  of  electricity.  I'm  thinking  of  get- 
ting it  up  a  little." 

Winifred  took  the  book  from  his  hand,  wondering,  with 
a  masterful  air  of  perfect  authority.  He  yielded  like  a 
lamb.  On  immaterial  questions  it  was  his  policy  not  to 
resist  her.  She  turned  to  the  page  where  his  finger  had 
rested  and  ran  it  down  lightly  with  her  quick  eye.  The 
key-words  showed  in  some  degree  at  what  it  was  driving: 
"Franklin's  Experiment"— "Means  of  Collection"— "The- 
ory of  Lightning  Rods"— "RuhmkorfFs  Coils"— "Draw- 
ing down  Electric  Discharges  from  the  Clouds." — Why, 
what  was  all  this?  She  turned  round  to  him  inquiringly. 
Hugh  shuffled  in  an  uneasy  way  in  his  chair.  The  hus- 
band who  shuffles  betrays  his  cause.  "We  must  put  up 
conductors,  Winnie,"  he  said  hesitatingly,  with  a  hot  face, 
"to  protect  those  new  gables  at  the  east  wing. — It's  dan- 
gerous to  leave  the  house  so  exposed.  I'll  order  them 
down  from  London  to-morrow." 

"Conductors!  Fiddlesticks!"  Winifred  answered  in  a 
breath,  with  wifely  promptitude.  "Lightning  never  hurt 


REHEARSAL.  253 

1he  house  yet,  and  it's  not  going  to  begin  hurting  it  now, 
just  because  an  Immortal  Poet  with  a  fad  for  electricity 
has  come  to  live  and  compose  at  Whitestrand.  If  any- 
thing, it  ought  to  go  the  other  way.  Bards,  you  know, 
are  exempt  from  thunderbolts.  Didn't  you  read  me  the 
lines  yourself,  'God's  lightnings  spared,  they  said,  Alone 
the  holier  head,  Whose  laurels  screened  it,'  or  something 
to  that  effect.  You're  all  right,  you  see.  Poets  can  never 
get  struck,  I  fancy." 

"But  'Mr.  Hatherley  said  to  me  once  you  would  never 
be  a  poet,' "  Hugh  repeated  with  a  smile,  exactly  mimick- 
ing Winifred's  querulous  little  voice  and  manner.  "As 
my  own  wife  doesn't  consider  me  a  poet,  Winifred,  I  shall 
venture  to  do  as  I  like  myself  about  my  private  property." 

Winifred  took  up  a  bedroom  candle  and  lighted  it 
quietly  without  a  word.  Then  she  went  up  to  muse  in  her 
own  bedroom  over  her  new  gourd  and  other  disillusion- 
ments. 

As  soon  as  she  was  gone,  Hugh  rose  from  his  chair 
and  walked  slowly  into  his  own  study.  Gordon's  "Elec- 
tricity" was  still  in  his  hand,  and  his  ringer  pointed  to  that 
incriminating  passage.  He  sat  down  at  the  sloping  desk 
and  wrote  a  short  note  to  a  well-known  firm  of  scientific 
instrument  makers  whose  address  he  had  copied  a  week 
before  from  the  advertisement  sheet  of  "Nature." 

"Whitestrand  Hall,  Almundham,  Suffolk. 
"Gentlemen, 

"Please  forward  me  to  the  above  address,  at  your 
earliest  convenience,  your  most  powerful  form  of  Ruhm- 
korff  Induction  Coil,  with  secondary  wires  attached,  for 
which  cheque  will  be  sent  in  full  on  receipt  of  invoice  or 
retail  price-list. 

"Faithfully  yours, 

"Hugh  Massinger." 

As  he  rose  from  the  desk,  he  glanced  half  involuntarily 
out  of  the  study  window.  It  pointed  south.  The  moon 
was  shining  full  on  the  water.  That  hateful  popfcr  stared 
him  straight  in  the  face,  as  tall  and  gaunt  and  immovable 
as  ever.  On  its  roots,  a  woman  in  a  white  dress  was 


254  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

standing,  looking  out  over  the  angry  sea,  as  Elsie  had 
stood,  for  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  on  that  terrible  evening 
when  he  lost  her  forever.  One  second,  the  sight  sent  a 
shiver  through  his  frame,  then  he  laughed  to  himself,  the 
next,  for  his  groundless  terror.  How  childish!  How 
infantile!  It  was  the  gardener's  wife,  in  her  light  print 
frock,  looking  out  to  sea  for  her  boy's  smack,  overdue,  no 
doubt — for  Charlie  was  a  fisherman. — But  it  was  intolera- 
ble that  he,  the  Squire  of  Whitestrand,  should  be  subjected 
to  such  horrible  turns  as  these. — He  shook  his  fist  angrily 
at  the  offending  tree.  "You  shall  pay  for  it,  my  friend," 
he  muttered  low  but  hoarse  between  his  clenched  teeth. 
"You  shan't  have  many  more  chances  of  frightening  me!" 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

ACCIDENTS  WILL  HAPPEN. 

During  the  whole  of  the  next  week,  the  Squire  and  a 
strange  artisan,  whom  he  had  specially  imported  by  rail 
from  London,  went  much  about  together  by  day  and  night 
through  the  grounds  at  Whitestrand.  A  certain  air  of 
mystery  hung  over  their  joint  proceedings.  The  strange 
artisan  was  a  skilled  workman  in  the  engineering  line,  he 
told  the  people  at  the  Fisherman's  Rest,  where  he  had 
taken  a  bed  for  his  stay  in  the  village ;  and  indeed  sundry 
books  in  his  kit  bore  out  the  statement — weird  books  of 
a  scientific  and  diagrammatic  character,  chockfull  of 
formulae  in  Greek  lettering,  which  seemed  not  unlikely  to 
be  connected  with  hydrostatics,  dynamics,  trigonometry, 
and  mechanics,  or  any  other  equally  abstruse  and  uncanny 
subject,  not  wholly  alien  to  necromancy  and  witchcraft 
It  was  held  at  Whitestrand  by  those  best  able  to  form  an 
opinion  in  such  dark  questions,  that  the  new  importation 
was  "summat  in  the  electric  way;"  and  it  was  certainly 
matter  of  pfain  fact,  patent  to  all  observers  equally,  that  he 
did  in  very  truth  fix  up  an  elaborate  lightning-conductor 
of  the  latest  pattern  to  the  newly-thrown-out  gable-end  at 
what  had  once  been  Elsie's  window.  It  was  Elsie's  win- 


ACCIDENTS  WILL  HAPPEN.  255 

dow  still  to  Hugh :  let  him  twist  it  and  turn  it  and  alter  it 
as  he  would,  he  feared  it  would  never,  never  cease  to  be 
Elsie's  window. 

But  in  the  domain  at  large,  the  intelligent  artisan  with 
the  engineering  air,  who  was  surmised  to  be  ''summat 
in  the  electric  way,"  carefully  examined,  under  Hugh's 
directions,  many  parts  of  the  grounds  of  Whitestrand. 
Squire  was  going  to  lay  out  the  garden  and  terrace  afresh, 
the  servants  conjectured  in  their  own  society:  one  or 
two  of  them,  exceedingly  modern  in  their  views,  even 
opined  in  an  off-hand  fashion  that  he  must  be  bent  on  lay- 
ing electric  lights  on.  Conservative  in  most  things  to  the 
backbone,  the  servants  bestowed  the  meed  of  their  hearty 
approval  on  the  electric  light:  it  saves  so  much  in  trim- 
ming and  cleaning.  Lamps  are  the  bug-bear  of  big  coun- 
try houses :  electricity,  on  the  other  hand,  needs  no  tend- 
ing. It  was  near  the  poplar  that  Squire  was  going  to  put 
his  installation,  as  they  call  the  arrangement  in  our  latter- 
day  jargon ;  and  he  was  going  to  drive  it,  rumor  remarked, 
by  a  tidal  outfall.  What  a  tidal  outfall  might  be,  or  how 
it  could  work  in  lighting  the  Hall,  nobody  knew;  but  the 
intelligent  artisan  had  let  the  words  drop  casually  in  the 
course  of  conversation ;  and  the  Fisherman's  Rest  snapped 
them  up  at  once,  and  retailed  them  freely  with  profound 
gusto  to  all  after-comers. 

Still,  it  was  a  curious  fact  in  its  own  way  that  the  in- 
stallation appeared  to  progress  most  easily  when  nobody 
happened  to  be  looking  on,  and  that  the  skilled  workman 
in  the  engineering  line  generally  stood  with  his  hands  in 
his  pockets,  surveying  his  handicraft  with  languid  interest, 
whenever  anybody  from  the  village  or  the  Hall  lounged 
up  by  his  side  to  inspect  or  wonder  at  it. 

More  curious  still  was  another  small  fact,  known  to 
nobody  but  the  skilled  workman  in  propria  persona,  that 
four  small  casks  of  petroleum  from  a  London  store  were 
stowed  away,  by  Hugh  Massinger's  orders,  under  the  very 
roots  of  the  big  poplar ;  and  that  by  their  side  lay  a  queer 
apparatus,  connected  apparently  in  some  remote  way  with 
electric  lighting. 

The  Squire  himself,  however,  made  no  secret  of  his  own 
personal  and  private  intentions  to  the  London  workman. 


25«  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

He  paid  the  man  well,  and  he  exacted  silence.  That  was 
all.  But  he  explained  precisely  in  plain  terms  what  it 
was  that  he  wanted  done.  The  tree  was  an  eyesore  to  him, 
he  said,  with  his  usual  frankness — Hugh  was  always  frank 
whenever  possible — but  his  wife,  for  sentimental  reasons, 
had  a  special  fancy  for  it.  He  wanted  to  get  rid  of  it, 
therefore,  in  the  least  obtrusive  way  he  could  easily  man- 
age. This  was  the  least  obtrusive  way.  So  this  was  what 
he  required  done  with  it.  The  London  workman  nodded 
his  head,  pocketed  his  pay,  looked  unconcerned,  and  held 
his  tongue  with  trained  fidelity.  It  was  none  of  his  busi- 
ness to  pry  into  any  employer's  motives.  Enough  for 
him  to  take  his  orders  and  to  carry  them  out  faithfully  to 
the  very  letter.  The  job  was  odd:  an  odd  job  is  always 
interesting.  He  hoped  the  experiment  might  prove  suc- 
cessful. 

The  Whitestrand  laborers,  who  passed  by  the  poplar 
and  the  London  workman,  time  and  again,  with  a  jerky 
nod  and  their  pipes  turned  downward,  never  noticed  a 
certain  slender  unobtrusive  copper  wire  which  the  strange 
artisan  fastened  one  evening,  in  the  gray  dusk,  right  up 
the  stem  and  boles  of  the  big  tree  to  a  round  knob  on 
the  very  summit.  The  wire,  however,  as  its  fixer  knew, 
ran  down  to  a  large  deal  box  well  buried  in  the  ground, 
which  bore  outside  a  green  label,  ''Ruhmkorff  Induction 
Coil,  Elliott's  Patent."  The  wire  and  coil  terminated  in 
a  pile  close  to  the  four  petroleum  barrels.  When  the 
London  workman  had  securely  laid  the  entire  apparatus, 
undisturbed  by  loungers,  he  reported  adversely,  with  great 
solemnity,  on  the  tidal  outfall  and  electric  light  scheme  to 
Hugh  Massinger.  No  sufficient  power  for  the  purpose 
existed  in  the  river.  This  adverse  report  was  orally  de- 
livered in  the  front  vestibule  of  Whitestrand  Hall ;  a'nd  it 
was  also  delivered  with  sedulous  care — as  per  orders  re- 
ceived— in  Mrs.  Massinger's  own  presence.  When  the 
London  workman  went  out  again  after  making  his  care- 
fully worded  statement,  he  went  out  clinking  a  coin  of  the 
realm  or  two  in  his  trousers'  pocket,  and  with  his  tongue 
stuck,  somewhat  unbecomingly,  in  his  right  cheek,  as  who 
should  pride  himself  on  the  successful  outwitting  of  an 
innocent  fellow-creature.  He  had  done  the  work  he  was 


ACCIDENTS  WILL,  HAPPEN.  257 

paid  for,  and  he  had  done  it  well.  But  he  thought  to 
himself,  as  he  went  his  way  rejoicing,  that  the  Squire  of 
Whitestrand  must  be  very  well  held  in  hand  indeed  by  that 
small  pale  lady,  if  he  had  to  take  so  many  cunning  precau- 
tions in  secret  beforehand  when  he  wanted  to  get  rid  of 
a  single  tree  that  offended  his  eye  in  his  own  gardens. 

The  plot  was  all  well  laid  now.  Hugh  had  nothing 
further  left  to  do  but  to  possess  his  soul  in  patience  against 
the  next  thunderstorm.  He  had  not  very  long  to  wait. 
Before  the  month  was  out  a  thunderstorm  did  indeed  burst 
in  full  force  over  Whitestrand  and  its  neighborhood — one 
of  those  terrible  and  destructive  east  coast  electric  displays 
which  invariably  leave  their  broad  mark  behind  them. 
For  along  the  low,  flat,  monotonous  East  Anglian  shore, 
where  hills  are  unknown  and  big  trees  rare,  the  lightning 
almost  inevitably  singles  out  for  its  onslaught  some  aspir- 
ing piece  of  man's  handiwork — some  church  steeple,  some 
castle  keep,  the  turrets  on  some  tall  and  isolated  manor- 
house,  the  vane  above  some  ancient  castellated  gateway. 

The  reason  for  this  is  not  far  to  seek.  In  hilly  coun- 
tries the  hills  and  trees  act  as  natural  lightning  conductors, 
or  rather  as  decoys  to  draw  aside  the  fine  from  heaven 
from  the  towns  or  farmhouses  that  nestle  far  below  among 
the  glens  and  valleys.  But  in  wide  level  plaias,  where 
all  alike  is  flat  and  low-lying,  human  architecture  forms 
for  the  most  part  the  one  salient  point  in  the  landscape 
for  lightning  to  attack:  every  church  or  tower  with  its 
battlements  and  lanterns  stands  in  the  place  of  the  polished 
knobs  on  an  electric  machine,  and  draws  down  upon  itself 
with  unerring  certainty  the  destructive  bolt  from  the  over- 
charged clouds.  Owing  to  this  cause,  the  thunderstorms 
of  East  Anglian  are  the  most  appalling  and  destructive 
in  their  concrete  results  of  any  in  England.  The  laden 
clouds,  big  with  electric  energy,  hang  low  and  dark  above 
one's  very  head,  and  let  loose  their  accumulated  store  of 
vivid  flashes  in  the  exact  midst  of  towns  and  villages. 

This  particular  thunderstorm,  as  chance  would  have  it, 
came  late  at  night,  after  three  sultry  days  of  close  weather, 
when  big  black  masses  were  just  beginning  to  gather  in 
vast  battalions  over  the  German  Ocean;  and  it  let  loose 
at  last  its  fierce  artillery  in  terrible  volleys  right  ever  the 


258  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

village  and  the  grounds  of  Whitestrand.  Hugh  Massinger 
was  the  first  at  the  Hall  to  observe  from  afar  the  distant 
flash,  before  the  thunder  had  made  itself  audible  in  their 
ears.  A  pale  light  to  westward,  in  the  direction  of  Snade, 
attracted,  as  he  read,  his  passing  attention.  "By  Jove!" 
he  cried,  rising  with  a  yawn  from  his  chair,  and  laying 
down  the  manuscript  of  "A  Life's  Philosophy,"  which  he 
was  languidly  correcting  in  its  later  stanzas,  "that's  some- 
thing like  lightning,  Winifred!  Over  Snade  way,  appar- 
ently. I  wonder  if  it's  going  to  drift  toward  us? — Whew 
— what  a  clap!  It's  precious  near.  I  expect  we  shall  catch 
it  ourselves  shortly." 

The  clouds  rolled  up  with  extraordinary  rapidity,  and 
the  claps  came  fast  and  thick  and  nearer.  Winifred  cow- 
ered down  on  the  sofa  in  terror.  She  dreaded  thunder; 
but  she  was  too  proud  to  confess  what  she  would  never- 
theless have  given  worlds  to  do — hide  her  frightened  little 
head  with  sobs  and  tears  in  its  old  place  upon  Hugh's 
shoulder.  "It's  coming  this  way,"  she  cried  nervously 
after  a  while.  "That  last  flash  must  have  been  awfully 
near  us." 

Even  as  she  spoke  a  terrific  volley  seemed  to  burst  all 
at  once  right  over  their  heads  and  shake  the  house  with 
its  irresistible  majesty.  Winifred  buried  her  face  deep 
in  the  cushions.  "Oh,  Hugh,"  she  cried  in  a  terrified 
tone,  "this  is  awful — awful!" 

Much  as  he  longed  to  look  out  of  the  window,  Hugh 
could  not  resist  that  unspoken  appeal.  He  drew  up  the 
blind  hastily  to  its  full  height,  so  that  he  might  see  out  to 
watch  the  success  of  his  deep-laid  stratagem;  then  he 
hurried  over  with  real  tenderness  to  Winifred's  side.  He 
drew  his  arm  round  her  and  soothed  her  with  his  hand, 
and  laid  her  poor  throbbing  aching  head  with  a  lover's 
caress  upon  his  own  broad  bosom.  Winifred  nestled  close 
to  him  with  a  sigh  of  relief.  The  nearness  of  danger,  real 
or  imagined,  rouses  all  the  most  ingrained  and  profound 
of  our  virile  feelings.  The  instinct  of  protection  for  the 
woman  and  the  child  comes  over  even  bad  men  at  such 
moments  of  doubt  with  irresistible  might  and  majesty. 
Small  differences  or  tiffs  are  forgotten  and  forgiven:  the 
woman  clings  naturally  in  her  feminine  weakness  to  the 


ACCIDENTS  WILL,  HAPPEN.  259 

strong  man  in  his  primary  aspect  as  comforter  and  pro- 
tector. Between  Hugh  and  Winifred  the  estrangement 
as  yet  was  but  vague  and  unacknowledged.  Had  it  yawned 
far  wider,  had  it  sunk  far  deeper,  the  awe  and  terror  of  that 
supreme  moment  would  amply  have  sufficed  to  bridge  it 
over,  at  least  while  the  orgy  of  the  thunderstorm  lasted. 

For  next  instant  a  sheet  of  liquid  flame  seemed  to  sur- 
round and  engulf  the  whole  house  at  once  in  its  white 
embrace.  The  world  became  for  the  twinkling  of  an  eye 
one  surging  flood  of  vivid  fire,  one  roar  and  crash  and 
sea  of  deafening  tumult.  Winifred  buried  her  face  deeper 
than  ever  on  Hugh's  shoulder,  and  put  up  both  her  small 
hands  to  her  tingling  ears,  to  crush  if  possible  the  hideous 
roar  out.  But  the  light  and  sound  seemed  to  penetrate 
everything:  she  was  aware  of  them  keenly  through  her 
very  bones  and  nerves  and  marrow;  her  entire  being 
appeared  as  if  pervaded  and  overwhelmed  with  the  horror 
of  the  lightning.  In  another  moment  all  was  over,  and  she 
was  conscious  only  of  an  abiding  awe,  a  deep-seated  after- 
glow of  alarm  and  terror.  But  Hugh  had  started  up  from 
the  sofa  now,  both  his  hands  clasped  hard  in  front  of  his 
breast,  and  was  gazing  wildly  out  of  the  big  bow-window, 
and  lifting  up  his  voice  in  a  paroxysm  of  excitement. 
"It's  hit  the  poplar!"  he  cried.  "It's  hit  the  poplar!  It 
must  be  terribly  near,  Winnie !  It's  hit  the  poplar!" 

Winifred  opened  her  eyes  with  an  effort,  and  saw  him 
standing  there,  as  if  spellbound,  by  the  window.  She 
dared  not  go  up  and  come  any  nearer  the  front  of  the  room, 
but  raising  her  eyes,  she  saw  from  where  she  sat,  or  rather 
crouched,  that  the  poplar  stood  out,  one  living  mass  of 
rampant  flame,  a  flaring  beacon,  from  top  to  bottom. 
The  petroleum,  ignited  and  raised  to  flashing-point  by  the 
fire  which  the  induction  coil  had  drawn  down  from  heaven, 
gave  off  its  blazing  vapor  in  huge  rolling  sheets  and 
forked  tongues  of  flame,  which  licked  up  the  crackling 
branches  of  the  dry  old  tree  from  base  to  summit  like  so 
much  touchwood.  The  poplar  rose  now  one  solid  column 
of  crimson  fire.  The  red  glow  deepened  and  widened 
from  moment  to  moment.  Even  the  drenching  rain  that 
followed  the  thunder-clap  seemed  powerless  to  check  that 
frantic  onslaught.  The  fire  leaped  and  danced  through 


MO  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

the  tall  straight  boughs  with  mad  exultation,  hissing  out 
its  defiance  to  the  big  round  drops  which  burst  off  into 
tiny  balls  of  steam  before  they  could  reach  the  red-hot 
trunk  and  snapping  branches.  Even  left  to  itself,  the 
poplar,  once  ignited,  would  have  burnt  to  the  ground  with 
startling  rapidity ;  for  its  core  was  dry  and  light  as  tinder, 
its  wood  was  eaten  through  by  innumerable  worm-holes, 
and  the  hollow  center  of  moldering  dry-rot,  where  chil- 
dren had  loved  to  play  at  hide  and  seek,  acted  now  like  a 
roaring  chimney  flue,  with  a  fierce  draught  that  carried 
up  the  circling  eddies  of  smoke  and  flame  in  mad  career  to 
the  topmost  branches.  But  the  fumes  of  the  petroleum, 
rendered  instantly  gaseous  by  the  electric  heat,  made  the 
work  of  destruction  still  more  instantaneous,  terrible,  and 
complete  than  it  would  have  proved  if  left  to  unaided 
nature.  The  very  atmosphere  resolved  itself  into  one  roll- 
ing pillar  of  fluid  flame.  The  tree  seemed  enveloped  in 
a  shroud  of  fire.  All  human  effort  must  be  powerless  to 
resist  it.  The  poplar  dissolved  almost  as  if  by  magic  with 
a  wild  rapidity  into  its  prime  elements. 

A  man  must  be  a  man  come  what  may.  Hugh  leaped 
toward  the  window  and  flung  it  open  wildly.  "I  must 
go!"  he  cried.  "Ring  the  bell  for  the  servants."  The 
savage  glee  in  his  voice  was  well  repressed.  His  enemy 
was  low,  laid  prone  at  his  feet,  but  he  would  at  least  pre- 
tend to  some  spark  of  magnanimity.  "We  must  get  out 
the  hose!"  he  exclaimed.  "We  must  try  to  save  it!"  Win- 
ifred clung  to  his  arm  in  horror.  "Let  it  burn  down, 
Hugh !"  she  cried.  "Who  cares  for  the  poplar?  I'd  sooner 
ten  thousand  poplars  burned  to  the  ground  than  that  you 
should  venture  out  on  such  an  evening!" 

Her  hand  on  his  arm  thrilled  through  him  with  hor- 
ror. Her  words  stung  him  with  a  sense  of  his  meanness. 
Something  very  like  a  touch  of  remorse  came  over  his 
spirit.  He  stooped  down  and  kissed  her  tenderly.  The 
next  flash  struck  over  toward  the  sandhills.  The  thunder 
was  rolling  gradually  seaward. 

Hugh  slept  but  little  that  eventful  night;  his  mind  ad- 
dressed itself  with  feverish  eagerness  to  so  many  hard 
and  doubtful  questions.  He  tossed  and  turned  and  asked 
himself  ten  thousand  times  over — was  the  tree  burnt 


ACCIDENTS  WILL  HAPPEN.  261 

through — burnt  down  to  the  ground?  Were  the  roots 
and  trunk  consumed  beyond  hope — or  rather  beyond  fear 
— of  ultimate  recovery?  Was  the  hateful  poplar  really 
done  for?  Would  any  trace  remain  of  the  barrels  that  had 
held  the  tell-tale  petroleum  ?  any  relic  be  left  of  the  Ruhm- 
korff  Induction  Coil?  What  jot  or  tittle  of  the  evidence 
of  design  would  now  survive  to  betray  and  convict  him? 
What  ground  for  reasonable  suspicion  would  Winifred 
see  that  the  fire  was  not  wholly  the  result  of  accident? 

But  when  next  morning's  light  dawned  and  the  sun 
arose  upon  the  scene  of  conflagration,  Hugh  saw  at  a 
glance  that  all  his  fears  had  indeed  been  wholly  and  utterly 
groundless.  The  poplar  was  as  though  it  had  never  exist- 
ed. A  bare  black  patch  by  the  mouth  of  the  Char,  covered 
with  ash  and  dust  and  cinder,  alone  marked  the  spot  where 
the  famous  tree  had  once  stood.  The  very  roots  were 
burned  deep  into  the  ground.  The  petroleum  had  done 
its  duty  bravely.  Not  a  trace  of  design  could  be  observed 
anywhere.  The  Ruhmkorff  Induction  Coil  had  melted 
into  air.  Nobody  ever  so  much  as  dreamed  that  human 
handicraft  had  art  or  part  in  the  burning  of  the  celebrated 
Whitestrand  poplar.  The  "Times"  gave  it  a  line  of  pass- 
ing regret;  and  the  Trinity  House  deleted  it  with  pains 
as  a  lost  landmark  from  their  sailing  directions. 

Hugh  set  his  workmen  instantly  to  stub  up  the  roots. 
And  Winifred,  gazing  mournfully  next  day  at  the  ruins, 
observed  with  a  sigh:  "You  never  liked  the  dear  old 
tree,  Hugh ;  and  it  seems  as  if  fate  had  interposed  in  your 
favor  to  destroy  it.  I'm  sorry  it's  gone;  but  I'd  sacrifice 
a  hundred  such  trees  any  day  to  have  you  as  kind  to  me 
as  you  were  last  evening." 

The  saying  smote  Hugh's  heart  sore.  He  played  nerv- 
ously with  the  button  of  his  coat.  "I  wish  you  could 
have  kept  it,  Winnie,"  he  said  not  unkindly.  "But  it's 
not  my  fault. — And  I  bear  no  malice.  I'll  even  forgive 
you  for  telling  me  I'd  never  make  a  poet;  though  that, 
you'll  admit,  was  a  hard  saying.  I  think,  my  child,  if  you 
don't  mind,  I'll  ask  Hatherley  down  next  week  to  visit  us. 
— There's  nothing  like  adverse  opinion  to  improve^  one's 
work.  Hatherley's  opinion  is  more  than  adverse.  I'd  like 
his  criticism  on  'A  Life's  Philosophy'  before  I  rush  into 


print  at  last  with  the  greatest  and  deepest  work  of  my  life- 
time." 

That  same  evening,  as  it  was  growing  dusk,  Warren 
Relf  and  Potts,  navigating  the  "Mud-Turtle"  around  by 
sea  from  Yarmouth  Roads,  put  in  for  the  night  to  the 
Char  at  Whitestrand.  They  meant  to  lie  by  for  a  Sunday 
in  the  estuary,  and  walk  across  the  fields,  if  the  day  proved 
fine,  to  service  at  Snade.  As  they  approached  the  mouth 
they  looked  about  in  vain  for  the  familiar  landmark.  At 
first  they  could  hardly  believe  their  eyes:  to  men  who 
knew  the  east  coast  well,  the  disappearance  of  the  White- 
strand  poplar  from  the  world  seemed  almost  as  incredible 
as  the  sudden  removal  of  the  Bass  Rock  or  the  Pillars  of 
Hercules.  Nobody  would  ever  dream  of  cutting  down  that 
glory  of  Suffolk,  that  time-honored  sea-mark.  But  as  they 
strained  their  eyes  through  the  deepening  gloom,  the 
stern  logic  of  facts  left  them  at  last  no  further  room  for 
syllogistic  reasoning  or  a  priori  scepticism.  The  White- 
strand  poplar  was  really  gone.  Not  a  stump  even  remained 
as  its  relic  or  its  monument. 

They  drove  the  yawl  close  under  the  shore.  The  current 
was  setting  out  stronger  than  ever,  and  eddying  back 
against  the  base  of  the  roots  with  a  fierce  and  eager  swirl- 
ing movement.  Warren  Relf  looked  over  the  bank  in 
doubt  at  the  charred  and  blackened  soil  beside  it.  He 
knew  in  a  second  exactly  what  had  happened.  "Massin- 
ger  has  burned  down  the  poplar,  Potts,"  he  cried  aloud. 
He  did  not  add,  "because  it  stood  upon  the  very  spot 
where  Elsie  Challoner  threw  herself  over."  But  he  knew 
it  was  so.  They  turned  the  yawl  up  stream  once  more. 
Then  Warren  Relf  murmured  in  a  low  voice,  more  than 
half  to  himself,  but  in  solemn  accents:  "So  much  the 
worse  in  the  end  for  Whitestrand." 

All  the  way  up  to  the  Fisherman's  Rest  he  repeated 
again  and  again  below  his  breath:  "So  much  the  worse 
in  the  end  for  Whitestrand." 


THE  BARD  IN  .HARNESS.  263 

CHAPTER  XXX. 

THE  BARD  IN  HARNESS. 

"I  never  felt  more  astonished  in  my  life,"  Hatherley  re- 
marked one  day  some  weeks  later  to  a  chosen  circle  at 
the  Cheyne  Row  Club,  "than  I  felt  on  the  very  first  morn- 
ing of  my  visit  to  Whitestrand.  Talk  about  being  driven 
by  a  lady,  indeed!  Why,  that  frail  little  woman's  got  the 
Bard  in  harness,  as  right  and  as  tight  as  if  he  were  a  re- 
spectable cheesemonger. — What  on  earth  do  you  think 
happened?  As  the  Divine  Singer  and  I  were  starting  out, 
stick  in  hand,  for  a  peregrination  of  the  estate — or  what 
there  is  left  of  it — if  that  perky  little  atomy  didn't  poke 
her  fuzzy,  tow-bewigged  head  out  of  the  dining-room 
window,  and  call  out  in  the  most  matter-of-fact  tone  pos- 
sible :  'Hugh,  if  you're  going  to  the  village  to-day,  mind 
you  don't  forget  to  bring  me  back  three  kippered  her- 
rings!'— Three  what?'  s'aid  I,  scarcely  believing  my  ears. 
— Three  kippered  herrings,'  that  unblushing  little  minx 
repeated  in  an  audible  voice,  wholly  unabashed  at  the 
absurdity  of  her  request. — 'Well,'  said  I,  in  a  fever  of  sur- 
prise, 'it  may  be  all  right  when  you've  got  them  well  in 
hand,  you  know;  but  you'll  admit,  Mrs.  Massinger,  that's 
not  the  use  to  which  we  generally  put  immortal  minstrels!' 
— 'Oh,  but  this  is  such  a  very  mild  specimen  of  the  genus, 
though!'  Mrs.  Massinger  answered,  laughing  carelessly. 
— I  looked  at  the  Bard  with  tremulous  awe,  expecting  to 
see  the  angry  fire  in  his  cold  gray  eye  flashing  forth  like 
the  leven  bolt  from  heaven  to  scath  and  consume  her. 
Not  a  bit  of  it.  Nary  scath !  The  Immortal  Singer  merely 
took  out  his  tablets  from  his  waistcoat  pocket  and  made 
a  note  of  the  absurd  commission.  And  when  we  came 
home  again  an  hour  afterward,  I  solemnly  assure  you  he 
was  carrying  those  three  identical  kippered  herrings, 
wrapped  up  in  a  sheet  of  dirty  newspaper,  in  the  very 
'hand  that  wrote  The  Death  of  Alaric.' — It's  too  surpris- 
ing. The  Bard's  done  for.  His  life  is  finished.  There  the 
Man  stops.  The  Husband  and  Father  may  drag  out  a 
wretched  domestic  existence  yet  for  another  twenty  years. 


264  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

But  the  Man  is  dead,  hopelessly  dead.  Julius  Caesar 
himself's  not  more  utterly  defunct.  That  girl  has  extin- 
guished him." 

"Are  there  any  children,  then?"  one  of  the  chosen  circle 
puts  in  casually. 

"Children!  No.  Bar  twins,  the  plural  would  surely 
be  premature,  so  far.  There  was  a  child  born  just  after 
old  Mrs.  Meysey's  death,  I  believe;  but  it  came  to  noth- 
ing— a  mere  abortive  attempt  at  a  son  and  heir — and  left 
the  mother  a  poor  wreck,  her  own  miserable  faded  photo- 
graph. She  was  a  nice  little  girl  enough,  in  her  small 
way,  when  she  was  here  in  town;  amusing  and  sprightly; 
but  the  Bard  has  done  for  her,  as  she's  done  for  the  Bard. 
It's  a  mutual  annihilation  society,  like  Stevenson's  Suicide 
Club,  on  a  more  private  platform. — He  seems  to  have 
crushed  all  the  giddy  girlishness  out  of  her.  The  fact 
is,  this  is  a  case  of  incompatibility  of  disposition — for 
which  cause  I  believe  you  can  get  a  divorce  in  Illinois  or 
some  other  enlightened  Far  Western  community.  You 
can't  stop  three  days  at  Whitestrand  without  feeling 
there's  a  skeleton  in  the  house  somewhere!" 

The  skeleton  in  the  house,  long  carefully  confined  to  its 
native  cupboard,  had  indeed  begun  to  perambulate  the 
Hall  in  open  daylight  during  the  brief  period  of  Hather- 
ley's  visit.  He  reached  the  newly  remodeled  home  just 
in  time  to  dress  for  dinner.  When  he  descended  to  the 
ill-lighted  drawing-room,  five  minutes  later — Whitestrand 
could  boast  no  native  gas-supply,  and  candles  are  expen- 
sive— he  gave  his  arm  with  a  sense  of  solemn  obligation 
to  poor  dark-clad  Winifred.  Mrs.  Massinger  was  indeed 
altered — sadly  altered.  Three  painful  losses  in  quick  suc- 
cession had  told  upon  that  slender  pale  young  wife.  She 
showed  her  paleness  in  her  deep  black  dress:  colors 
suited  Winifred:  in  mourning,  she  was  hardly  even  pretty. 
The  little  "arrangement  in  pink  and  white"  had  faded 
almost  into  white  alone:  the  pinkness  had  proved  a  fleet- 
ing pigment:  she  was  not  warranted  fast  colors.  But 
Hatherley  did  his  best  with  innate  gallantry  not  to  notice 
the  change.  Fresh  from  town,  crammed  with  the  last 
good  things  of  the  Cheyne  Row  and  Mrs.  Bouverie  Bar- 
ton's Wednesday  evenings,  he  tried  hard  with  conscien- 


THE  BARD  IN  HARNESS.  265 

tious  efforts  to  keep  the  conversation  from  flagging  vis- 
ibly. At  first  he  succeeded  with  creditable  skill;  and 
Hugh,  looking  across  at  his  wife  with  a  curious  smile, 
said  in  a  tone  of  genuine  pleasure :  "How  delightful  it  is, 
after  all,  Winnie,  to  get  hold  of  somebody  direct  from 
the  real  live  world  of  London  in  the  midst  of  our  fossil- 
ized antediluvian  Whitestrand  society! — I  declare,  Hath- 
erley,  it  does  one's  heart  good,  like  champagne,  to  listen 
to  you.  A  breath  of  Bohemia  blows  across  Suffolk  the 
moment  you  arrive.  Poor  drowsy,  somnolent,  petrified 
Suffolk!  'Silly  Suffolk/  even  the  aborigines  themselves 
call  it.  It's  catching,  too.  I'm  almost  beginning  to  fall 
asleep  myself,  by  force  of  example." 

At  the  words,  Winifred  fired  up  in  defense  of  her  native 
county.  "I'm  sure,  Hugh,"  she  said  with  some  asperity, 
"I  don't  know  why  you're  always  trying  to  run  down 
Suffolk!  If  you  didn't  like  us,  you  should  have  avoided 
the  shire ;  you  should  have  carried  your  respected  presence 
elsewhere.  Suffolk  never  invited  you  to  honor  it  with 
your  suffrages.  You  came  and  settled  here  of  your  own 
free  will.  And  who  could  be  nicer  or  more  cultivated,  if 
it  comes  to  that,  than  some  of  our  Suffolk  aborigines,  as 
you  call  them?  Dear  old  Mrs.  Walpole  at  the  vicarage, 
for  example." 

Hugh  balanced  an  olive  on  the  end  of  his  fork.  "An 
amiable  old  Hecuba,"  he  answered  provokingly.  "What's 
Hecuba  to  me,  or  I  to  Hecuba?  Her  latest  dates  are  about 
the  period  of  the  siege  of  Troy,  or,  to  be  more  precisely 
accurate,  the  year  1850.  She's  extremely  well  read,  I 
grant  you  that,  in  Bulwer  Lytton  and  the  poets  of  the 
Regency.  She  adores  Cowper,  and  considers  Voltaire 
a  most  dangerous  writer.  She  has  even  heard  of  Bismarck 
and  Bulgaria;  and  she  understands  that  a  young  man 
named  Swinburne  has  lately  published  some  very  objec- 
tionable and  unwholesome  verses,  not  suited  to  the  cheek 
of  the  young  person. — The  idea  of  sticking  me  down 
with  people  like  that,  who  never  read  a  line  of  Browning 
in  their  lives,  and  ask  if  Mr.  William  Morris,  'the  uphol- 
sterer,' who  furnished  and  decorated  our  poor  little  draw- 
ing-room, is  really  a  brother  of  that  eccentric  and  rather 
heteroctox  preacher!— My  cjear  Hatherley,  when  you 


266  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

come  down,  I  feel  like  a  man  who  has  breathed  fresh  air 
on  some  high  mountain — stimulated  and  invigorated. 
You  palpitate  with  actuality.  Down  here,  we  stagnate  in 
the  seventeenth  century." 

Winifred  bit  her  lip  with  vexation,  but  said  nothing. 
It  was  evident  the  subject  was  an  unpleasant  one  to  her. 
But  she  at  least  would  not  trot  out  the  skeleton.  Women 
are  all  for  due  concealment  of  your  dirty  linen.  It  is  men 
who  insist  on  washing  it  in  public. 

Next  morning — the  morning  of  the  kippered  herring 
adventure — Hugh  showed  Hatherley  round  the  White- 
strand  estate.  Hatherley  himself  was  not,  to  say  the  truth, 
in  the  best  of  humors.  Mrs.  Massinger  was  dull  and  not 
what  she  used  to  be:  she  obviously  resented  his  bright 
London  gossip,  as  throwing  into  stronger  and  clearer 
relief  the  innate  stupidity  of  her  ancestral  Suffolk.  The 
breakfast  was  bad;  the  coffee  sloppy;  and  the  dishes 
suggested  too  obvious  reminiscences  of  the  joints  and 
entrees  at  last  night's  dinner.  Clearly,  the  Massingers 
were  struggling  hard  to  keep  up  appearances  on  an  in- 
sufficient income.  They  were  stretching  their  means  much 
too  thin.  The  Morris  drawing-room  was  all  very  well  in 
its  way,  of  course;  but  tulip-pattern  curtains  and  De 
Morgan  pottery  don't  quite  make  up  for  a  rechauffe  of 
kidneys.  Moreover,  a  suspicion  floated  dimly  through 
the  air  that  to-morrow's  dawn  would  see  those  three 
kippered  herrings  as  the  sole  alternative  to  the  curried 
drumsticks  left  behind  as  a  legacy  by  this  evening's  roast 
chicken.  Hatherley  was  an  epicure,  like  most  club-bred 
men,  and  his  converse  for  the  day  took  a  color  from  the 
breakfast  table  for  good  or  for  evil.  So  he  started  out 
that  morning  in  a  dormant  ill-humor,  prepared  to  tease 
and  "draw"  Massinger,  who  had  had  the  bad  taste  to  desert 
Bohemia  for  dull  respectability  and  ill-paid  Squiredom 
in  the  wilds  of  Suffolk. 

Hugh  showed  him  first  the  region  of  the  sandhills. 
The  sandhills  were  a  decent  bit  to  begin  with.  "Aeolian 
sands!"  Hatherley  murmured  contemplatively  as  Hugh 
mentioned  the  name.  "How  very  pretty*!  How  very 
poetical!  You  can  hardly  regret  it  yourself,  Massinger, 
this  overwhelming  of  your  salt  marshes  by  the  shifting 


THE  BARD  IN  HARNESS.  267 

sands,  when  you  reflect  at  leisure  it  was  really  done  by 
anything  with  so  sweet  an  epithet  as  Aeolian." 

"I  thought  so  once,"  Hugh  answered  dryly,  with  obvious 
distaste,  "when  it  was  the  property  of  my  late  respected 
father-in-law.  But  circumstances  alter  cases,  you  know,  as 
somebody  once  remarked  with  luminous  platitude;  and 
since  I  came  into  the  estate  myself,  to  tell  you  the  truth,  I 
can't  forgive  the  beastly  sands,  even  though  they  happen 
to  be  called  Aeolian." 

"Aeolian  sands,"  Hatherley  repeated  once  more,  half 
aloud,  with  a  tender  reluctance.  "Curious;  there's  hardly 
any  word  in  the  language  to  rhyme  with  so  simple  a 
sound  as  Aeolian.  Tmolian  does  it,  of  course ;  but  Tmol- 
ian,  you  see,  is  scarcely  English,  or  if  English  at  all,  only  by 
courtesy.  There's  a  fellow  called  Croll,  I  believe,  who's 
invented  a  splendid  theory  of  his  own  about  the  Glacial 
Epoch;  but  I've  never  seen  it  anywhere  described  in  print 
as  the  Crollian  hypothesis.  One  might  coin  the  adjective, 
of  course,  on  the  analogy  of  Darwinian  and  Carlylese  and 
Ruskinesque  and  Tennysonian ;  but  it's  scarcely  legitimate 
to  coin  a  word  for  the  sake  of  a  rhyme.  Aeolian — Crollian : 
the  jingle  would  only  go  down,  I'm  afraid,  in  geological 
circles." 

Hugh's  lip  curled  contemptuously.  He  had  passed 
through  all  that:  he  knew  its  hollowness  only  too  well — 
the  merely  literary  way  of  regarding  things.  Time  was 
when  he  himself  had  seen  in  everything  but  a  chance  for 
crisp  and  telling  epigrams,  an  opening  for  a  particular 
rhyme  or  turn  of  phrase.  Nowadays,  however,  all  that  was 
changed:  he  knew  better:  he  was  a  practical  man — a 
Squire  and  a  landlord.  "My  dear  fellow,"  he  said,  with 
some  slight  acerbity  peeping  through  the  threadbare 
places  in  his  friendly  tone,  "men  talk  like  that  when  they're 
hopelessly  young.  Contact  with  affairs  makes  a  man  soon 
forget  phrases.  We  deal  in  facts,  not  words,  when  we 
finally  arrive  at  years  of  discretion.  I  think  now  of  the 
reality  of  the  blown  sand — the  depreciation  and  loss  ^  of 
rent — not  the  mere  prettiness  of  the  sound  of  Aeolian." 

"Yes,  I  know,  my  dear  boy,"  Hatherley  answered,  in  his 
patronizing  way,  scarcely  smearing  his  barb  with  delusive 
honey.  "You've  gone  over  lo  the  enemy  now:  you've 


268  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

elected  to  dwell  in  the  courts  of  Gath:  you're  no  longer 
of  Ours:  you're  an  adopted  Philistine.  Deserters  do  well 
to  fight  in  defense,  of  their  new  side.  You'd  rather  have 
your  wretched  fat  salt  marshes,  with  their  prize  oxen  and 
their  lean  agues,  than  all  these  pretty  little  tumbled  sand- 
hills that  make  such  a  fairyland  of  mimic  hillsides. — 
Don't  say  you  wouldn't,  for  I  know  you  would:  you 
descend  on  stepping-stones  of  your  dead  self,  the  opposite 
way  from  Tennyson's  people,  to  lower  things — even  to  the 
nethermost  abysses  of  Philistia." 

Hugh  swung  his  cane  uneasily  in  his  hand.  He  re- 
membered  only  too  well  that  summer  afternoon  when  he 
himself — not  yet  a  full-fledged  squireen — had  indulged  in 
that  self-same  rhyme  of  "Aeolian,"  "Tmolian,"  before  the 
astonished  face  of  old  Mr.  Meysey.  He  remembered  the 
magnificent  long-horned  Highland  cattle — "Bulls  that 
walk  the  pastures  in  kingly-flashing  coats,"  he  had  called 
them  that  day,  after  George  Meredith.  He  knew  now 
they  were  only  old  Grimes'  black  Ayrshires,  fattened  for 
market  upon  the  rank  salt-marsh  vegetation.  "Well,  you 
see,  Hatherley,"  he  said,  with  a  certain  inward  conscious- 
ness of  appearing  to  his  friend  at  an  appalling  disadvan- 
tage, "we  must  look  at  practical  matters  from  a  practical 
standpoint.  Government's  behaved  scandalously  to  the 
land-owners  about  the  protection  of  the  Suffolk  foreshore. 
These  sandhills  tell  upon  a  fellow's  income.  If  the  sand 
could  only  be  turned  into  gold  dust " 

Hatherley  interrupted  him  with  a  happy  thought. 
:<  'Where  Afric's  sunny  fountains  Roll  down  their  golden 
sands,'"  he  cried  with  an  aptitude.  "If  the  Char  were 
only  Pactolus,  now,  'a  fellow's  income'  would  be  still  in- 
tact. There's  the  very  rhyme  for  you.  'Aeolian' — Tac- 
tolian';  you  can  write  a  sonnet  to  it  embodying  that 
notion. — At  least  you  could  have  written  one,  in  the  good 
old  days,  when  you  were  still  landless  and  still  immortal. 
But  in  these  later  times,  as  you  say  yourself,  contact  with 
affairs  has  certainly  made  you  forget  phrases. — You've 
come  down  from  Olympus  to  be  a  Suffolk  Squire.  You'll 
admit  it  yourself,  there's  been  a  terrible  falling  off,  of  late, 
you  know— one  can't  deny  it — in  your  verses,  Massinger." 

"Bohemia  is  naturally  intolerant  of  seceders,"  Hugh 


THE  BARD  IN  HARNESS.  269 

answered  gloomily.  "Each  man  sees  in  his  neighbor's 
backsliding  the  premonition  of  his  own  proximate  down- 
fall.— You  will  marry  in  time,  and  migrate,  even  you 
yourself,  to  fixed  quarters  in  Askelon. — Prague's  a  cap- 
ital town  to  secure  lodgings  in  for  some  weeks  of  one's 
youth,  but  it's  not  the  precise  place  where  a  man  would 
like  to  settle  down  for  a  whole  lifetime." 

They  walked  along  in  Silence  for  a  while,  each  absorbed 
in  his  own  thoughts — Hatherley  ruminating  upon  this 
melancholy  spectacle  of  a  degenerate  son  of  dear  old 
Cheyne  Row  gone  wrong  forever:  Massinger  reflecting 
in  his  own  mind  upon  the  closer  insight  into  the  facts  of 
life  which  property,  with  its  cares  and  responsibilities, 
gives  one — when  he  suddenly  halted  with  a  short  sharp 
whistle  at  the  turn  of  the  path.  "Whew!"  he  cried;  "why, 
what  the  dickens  is  this?  The  poplar's  disappeared — at 
least,  it's  place,  I  mean." 

"Ah,  yes!  Mrs.  Massinger  told  me  all  about  that  un- 
lucky poplar  when  you  were  gone  last  night,"  Hatherley 
answered  cheerfully.  "The  only  good  object  in  the  view, 
she  said — and  I  can  easily  believe  her,  to  judge  by  the 
remainder.  It  got  struck  by  lightning  one  stormy  night, 
and  disappeared  then  and  there  entirely!" 

"This  is  strange — very  strange!"  Hugh  went  on  to  him- 
self, never  heeding  the  babbling  interruption.  "The 
sand's  clearly  collected  on  this  side  of  late.  There's  a  dis- 
tinct hummock  here,  like  the  ones  at  Grimes'. — I  wonder 
what  on  earth  these  waves  and  mounds  of  sand  can  mean? 
— The  wind's  not  going  to  attack  this  side  of  the  river,  too, 
is  it?" 

"Ah,  Squoire,"  a  man  at  work  in  the  field  put  in,  coming 
up  to  join  them,  and  leaning  upon  his  pitchfork — "ah'm 
glad  yo've  come  to  see  it  yourself,  naow.  That's  jest  what 
it  be.  The  sand's  a-driftin'.  Ah  said  to  Tom,  the  night 
the  thunderbolt  took  th'  owd  poplar — ah  said:  Tom,' 
says  ah,  'that  there  poplar  were  the  only  bar  as  stopped 
the  river  an'  the  sand  from  shifting.  It's  shifted  all  along 
till  it's  reached  the  poplar;  an'  naow  it'll  shift  an'  shift,  an' 
shift  tiH  k  gets  to  Lowestoft  or  mayhap  to  Norwich.'— An' 
if  yo'll  look,  Squoire,  yo'll  see  for  yourself — the  river's 
acshally  ninnin'  zackly  where  the  tree  had  used  to  stand; 


270  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

an'  the  sand's  a-driftin'  an'  a-driftin,'  same  as  it  allays  drift 
down  yonner  at  Grimes'.  An'  it's  my  belief  it'll  never  stop 
till  it's  reached  the  poplar;  an'  naow  it'll  shift,  an'  shift,  an' 
strand." 

Hugh  Massinger  gazed  in  silence  at  the  spot  where  the 
Whitestrand  poplar  had  once  stood  with  an  utter  feeling 
of  sinking  helplessness  taking  possession  of  his  heart 
and  bos6m.  A  single  glance  told  him  beyond  doubt  the 
man  was  right.  The  poplar  had  stood  as  the  one  frail 
barrier  to  the  winds  and  waves  of  the  German  Ocean.  He 
had  burnt  it  down,  by  wile  and  guile,  of  deliberate  intent, 
that  night  of  the  thunderstorm,  to  get  rid  of  the  single 
mute  witness  to  Elsie's  suicide.  And  now  his  Nemesis 
had  worked  itself  out.  The  sea  was  advancing,  inch  by 
inch,  with  irresistible  march,  against  doomed  Whitestrand. 

Inch  by  inch!  Nay,  yard  by  yard.  Gazing  across  to 
the  opposite  bank,  and  roughly  measuring  the  distance 
with  his  eye,  Hugh  saw  the  river  had  been  diverted  north- 
ward many  feet  since  he  last  visited  the  site  of  the  poplar. 
He  always  avoided  that  hateful  spot:  the  very  interval 
that  had  elapsed  since  his  last  visit  enabled  him  all  the 
better  to  gauge  at  sight  the  distance  the  river  had  advanced 
meanwhile  in  its  silent  invasion. 

"I  must  get  an  engineer  to  come  down  and  see  to  this," 
he  said  shortly.  "We  must  put  up  a  breakwater  ourselves, 
I  suppose,  since  a  supine  administration  refuses  to  help 
us. — I  wonder  who's  the  proper  man  to  go  to  for  break- 
waters? I'd  wire  to  town  to-night,  if  I  knew  whom  to 
wire  to,  and  check  the  thing  before  it  runs  any  farther." 

"What's  that  Swinburne  says?"  Hatherley  asked  mus- 
ingly. "I  forget  the  exact  run  of  the  particular  lines,  but 
they  occur  somewhere  in  the  'Hymn  to  Proserpine' — 

'Will  ye  bridle  the  deep  sea  with  reins?   will  ye  chasten  the 

high  sea  with  rods? 
Will  ye  take  her  to  chain  her  with  chains  which  is  older  than 

all,  ye  gods?' 

I  don't  expect,  my  dear  boy,  your  engineer  will  do  much 
for  you.  Man's  but  a  pigmy  before  these  natural  powers. 
A  breakwater's  helpless  against  the  ceaseless  dashing  of 
the  eternal  sea." 


THE  BARD  IN  HARNESS.  271 

Hugh  Massinger  almost  lost  his  temper — especially 
when  he  reflected  with  bitter  self-abasement  that  those  were 
the  very  lines  he  had  quoted  to  Elsie — in  his  foolish  pre- 
territorial  days — about  Mr.  Meysey's  sensible  proposal  for 
obtaining  an  injunction  against  the  German  Ocean. 
"Eternal  sea!  Eternal  fiddlesticks!"  he  answered  testily. 
"It's  all  very  well  for  you  to  talk ;  but  it's  a  matter  of  life 
and  death  to  me,  this  checking  the  inroads  of  your  eternal 
humbug.  Eternal  sea,  indeed!  What  utter  rubbish!  It's 
the  curse  of  the  purely  literary  intellect  that  it  never  looks 
at  Things  at  all,  but  only  at  Phrases. — We've  got  to  build 
a  breakwater,  that's  what  it  comes  to.  And  a  breakwater'll 
run  into  a  pot  of  money." 

"Pity  the  old  tree  ever  got  burnt  down,  anyhow,  to 
begin  with,"  Hatherley  murmured  low,  endeavoring,  now 
he  had  fairly  drawn  his  man,  to  assume  a  sympathetic 
expression  of  countenance. 

"No!"  Hugh  thundered  back  savagely  at  last,  unable 
to  control  himself.  "Having  to  build  a  breakwater's  bad 
enough;  but  I  wouldn't  have  that  hateful  old  tree  back 
again  there  for  all  the  gold  that  ever  flowed  in  that  Pac- 
tolus  you  chatter  about. — Leave  the  tree  alone,  I  say. 
Confound  it!  I  hate  it!" 

They  walked  back  slowly  to  the  Hall  in  silence,  passing 
through  the  village  even  so,  out  of  pure  habit,  for  the  three 
herrings.  Hugh  was  evidently  very  much  put  out.  Hath- 
erley considered  him  even  rude  and  bearish.  A  man  should 
restrain  himself  before  the  faces  of  his  guests.  At  the  door, 
Hatherley  strolled  off  round  the  garden  walks  and  lit  a 
cigar.  Hugh  went  up  to  his  own  dressing-room. 

The  rest  Hatherley  never  knew;  he  only  knew  that  at 
dinner  that  night  Mrs.  Massinger's  eyes  were  red  and  sore 
with  crying.  For  when  Hugh  reached  his  own  room — 
that  pretty  little  dressing-room  with  the  pomegranate 
wall-paper  and  the  pale  blue  Lahore  hangings — he  found 
Winifred  fiddling  at  his  private  desk,  a  new  tall  black- 
walnut  desk  with  endless  drawers  and  niches  and  pigeon- 
holes. A  sudden  something  rose  in  his  throat  as  he  saw 
her  fumbling  at  the  doors  of  the  cabinet.  Where  had  she 
found  that  carefully  guarded  key?— Aha,  he  knew!  That 
fellow  Hatherley!— Hatheriey  had  taken  a  cigar  from  his 


272  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

case  as  they  went  out  for  their  stroll  together  that  luckless 
morning;  and  instead  of  returning  the  case  to  its  owner, 
had  laid  it  down  in  his  careless  way  on  the  study  table. 
He  always  kept  the  key  concealed  in  the  case. — Winifred 
must  accidentally  have  found  it,  and  tried  to  worm  out  her 
husband's  secrets. — He  hated  such  meanness  in  other  peo- 
ple. How  much,  he  wondered,  had  she  found  out  now 
after  all  for  her  trouble? 

Ah! 

They  both  cried  out  in  one  voice  together ;  for  Winifred 
had  opened  a  pigeon-hole  box  with  the  special  key,  and 
was  looking  intently  with  rigid  eyes  at — a  small  gold 
watch  and  a  bundle  of  letters. 

With  a  wild  dart  forward,  Hugh  tore  them  from  her 
grasp  and  crunched  them  in  his  hand;  but  not  before 
Winifred  had  seen  two  things:  first,  that  the  watch  was  a 
counterpart  of  her  own — the  very  watch  Hugh  had  given 
to  Elsie  Challoner;  second,  that  the  letters  were  in  a 
familiar  hand — no  other  hand  than  Elsie  Challoner's. 

She  fronted  him  long  with  a  pale  cold  face.  Hugh  took 
the  watch  and  letters  before  her  very  eyes,  and  locked 
them  up  again  in  their  pigeon-hole,  angrily.  "So  this  is 
how  you  play  the  spy  upon  me!"  he  cried  at  last  with 
supreme  contempt  in  his  voice  and  manner. 

But  Winifred  simply  answered  nothing.  She  burst  into 
a  fierce  wild  flood  of  tears.  "I  knew  it!'"  she  moaned  in  an 
agony  of  slighted  affection.  "I  knew  it!  I  knew  it!" 

So,  after  all,  in  spite  of  her  flight  and  her  pretended  cool- 
ness, Elsie  was  corresponding  still  with  her  husband! 
Cruel,  cruel,  cruel  Elsie!  Yet  why  had  she  given  him 
back  his  watch  again  ?  That  was  more  than  Winifred  could 
ever  explain  in  her  simple  philosophy.  She  could  only 
cry  and  cry  her  eyes  out 


COMING  ROUND.  273 

CHAPTER  XXXI. 

COMING  ROUND. 

When  Warren  Relf  steered  back  his  bark  to  San  Remo  and 
Elsie  that  next  autumn,  he  had  not  yet  exactly 
been  "boomed,"  as  Edie  had  predicted;  but  his 
artistic,  or  rather  his  business  prospects  had  im- 
proved considerably  through  the  intervening  sum- 
mer. Hatherley's  persistent  friendly  notices  of  his 
work  in  the  "Charing  Cross  Review,"  and  Mitch- 
ison's  constant  flow  of  rhapsodies  about  his  "charming 
morbidezza"  in  West  End  drawing-rooms,  had  begun  to 
bring  his  sea-pieces  at  last  more  prominently  into  notice. 
The  skipper  of  the  "Mud-Turtle"  had  gone  up  one.  It  was 
the  mode  to  speak  of  him  now  in  artistic  coteries,  no  longer 
as  a  melancholy  instance  of  well-meaning  failure,  but 
as  a  young  man  of  rising  though  misunderstood  talent. 
His  knowledge  of  "values"  was  allowed  to  be  profound. 
If  you  wish  to  lead  the  fore-front  of  opinion,  indeed,  you 
referred  familiarly  in  a  parenthetical  side-sentence  to  "gen- 
ius like  Burne  Jones/  or  Relf's,  or  Watts'.  To  be  sure, 
he  didn't  yet  sell ;  but  it  was  understood  in  astute  buying 
circles  that  people  who  could  pick  up  an  early  Relf  dirt 
cheap  and  were  prepared  to  hang  on  long  enough  to  their 
purchase,  would  be  sure  in  the  end  to  see  the  color  of  their 
money.  It  was  even  asserted  by  exceptionally  knowing 
connoisseurs  at  the  Burlington  and  the  Savage  that  that 
color  would  most  probably  have  changed  meanwhile,  by 
the  subtle  alchemy  of  unearned  increment,  from  silvery 
white  to  golden  yellow.  Warren  Relf  sat  perched  on  the 
flowing  tide  of  opportunism ;  and  all  critics  are  abandoned 
opportunists  by  use  and  by  nature.  They  invariably  salute 
the  rising  sun;  the  coming  man  has  their  warmest 
suffrages. 

That  winter  at  San  Remo  was  the  happiest  Warren  had 
yet  passed  there ;  for  he  began  to  perceive  that  Elsie  was 
relenting.  In  a  timid,  tremulous,  shamefaced,  unacknowl- 
edged sort  of  way,  she  was  learning  little  by  little  to  love 


274  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

him.  She  would  not  confess  it  at  first  even  to  herself. 
Elsie  was  too  much  of  a  woman  to  admit  in  the  intimacy 
of  her  own  heart,  far  less  in  the  ear  of  any  outside  confi- 
dante, that  having  once  loved  Hugh  she  could  now  veer 
round  and  love  Warren.  The  sense  of  personal  consist- 
ency runs  deep  in  women.  They  can't  bear  to  turn  their 
backs  upon  their  dead  selves,  even  though  it  be  in  order 
to  rise  to  higher  and  ever  higher  planes  of  affection  and 
devotion.  Still,  in  spite  of  everything,  Elsie  Challoner 
grew  by  degrees  dimly  aware  that  she  did  actually  love  the 
quiet  young  marine  painter.  She  had  a  hard  struggle  with 
herself,  to  be  sure,  before  she  could  quite  recognize  the 
fact;  but  she  recognized  it  at  last,  and  in  her  own  heart 
frankly  admitted  it.  Warren  was  not  indeed  externally 
brilliant  and  vivid,  like  Hugh ;  he  didn't  sparkle  with  epi- 
gram and  repartee ;  the  soul  that  was  in  him  let  itself  out 
more  fully  and  freely  on  quiet  canvas,  in  beautiful  dreamy 
poetic  imaginings,  than  in  the  feverish  give-and-take  of 
modern  society.  It  let  itself  out  more  fully  and  freely, 
too,  in  the  gentle  repose  of  tete-a-tete  talk  than  in  the 
stimulating  atmosphere  of  a  big  dining-room,  or  of  Mrs. 
Bouverie  Barton's  celebrated  Wednesday  evening  recep- 
tions. But  while  Hugh  scintillated,  Warren  Relf's  nature 
burned  rather  with  a  clear  and  steady  flame.  It  was  easy 
enough  for  anybody  to  admire  Hugh:  his  strong  points 
glittered  in  the  eye  of  day:  only  those  who  dip  a  little 
below  the  surface  ever  reached  the  profoundei  depths 
of  good  and  beauty  that  lay  hid  in  such  a  mind  as  War- 
ren's. Yet  Elsie  felt  in  her  own  soul  it  was  a  truer  thing 
after  all  to  love  Warren  than  to  love  Hugh;  a  greater 
triumph  to  have  won  Warren's  deep  and  earnest  regard 
than  to  have  impressed  Hugh's  fancy  one  with  a  selfish 
passion.  She  felt  all  that;  but  being  a  woman,  of  course 
she  never  acknowledged  it.  She  went  on  fighting  hard 
against  her  own  heart,  on  behalf  of  the  old  dead  worse  love, 
and  to  the  detriment  of  the  new  and  living  better  one ;  and 
all  the  while  she  pretended  to  herself  she  was  thereby  dis- 
playing her  profound  affection  and  her  noble  consistency. 
She  must  never  marry  Warren,  whom  she  truly  loved,  and 
who  truly  loved  her,  for  the  sake  of  that  Hugh  who  had 
never  loved  her,  and  whom  she  herself  could  never  have 


COMING  ROUND.  275 

loved  had  she  only  known  him  as  he  really  was  in  all  his 
mean  and  selfish  inner  nature.  That  may  be  foolish,  but  it's 
intensely  womanly.  We  must  take  women  as  they  are. 
They  were  made  so  at  first,  and  all  our  philosophy  will 
never  mend  it. 

She  couldn't  endure  that  anyone  should  imagine  she  had 
forgotten  her  love  and  her  sorrow  for  Hugh.  She  couldn't 
endure,  after  her  experience  with  Hugh,  that  any  man 
should  take  her,  thus  helpless  and  penniless.  If  she'd 
been  an  heiress  like  Winifred,  now,  things  might  per- 
haps have  been  a  little  different;  if  by  marrying  Warren 
she  could  have  put  him  in  a  position  to  prosecute  his  art, 
as  she  would  have  wished  him  to  prosecute  it,  without 
regard  for  the  base  and  vulgar  necessity  of  earning  bread- 
and-cheese  for  himself  and  his  family,  she  might  possibly 
have  consented  in  such  a  case  to  forego  her  own  private 
and  personal  feelings,  and  to  make  him  happy  for  art's 
sake  and  humanity's.  But  to  burden  his  struggling  life 
still  further,  when  she  knew  how  little  his  art  brought  him, 
and  how  much  he  longed  to  earn  an  income  for  his 
mother  and  Edie  to  retire  upon — that  she  couldn't  bear 
to  face  for  a  moment.  She  would  dismiss  the  subject;  she 
would  make  him  feel  she  could  never  be  his ;  it  was  only 
tantalizing  poor  kind-hearted  Warren  to  keep  him  dang- 
ling about  any  longer. 

"Elsie,"  he  "said  to  her  one  day  on  the  hills,  as  they 
strolled  together,  by  olive  and  pinewood,  among  the 
asphodels  and  anemones,  "I  had  another  letter  from  Lon- 
don this  morning.  The  market's  looking  up.  Benson 
has  sold  the  'Rade  de  Villefranche.' " 

"I'm  so  glad,  Warren,"  Elsie  answered  warmly.  "It's  a 
sweet  picture — one  of  your  loveliest.  Did  you  get  a  good 
price  for  it?" 

"Forty  guineas.  That's  not  so  bad  as  prices  go.  So 
I'm  going  to  buy  Edie  that  new  dinner-dress  you  and  I 
were  talking  about.  I  know  you  won't  mind  running 
over  to  Mentone  and  choosing  some  nice  stuff  at  the 
drapers  there  for  me.  Things  are  looking  up.  There's 
no  doubt  I'm  rising  in  the  English  market.  My  current 
quotations  improve  daily.  Benson  says  he  sold  that  bit 
to  a  rich  American.  Americans,  if  you  can  once  manage 


27«  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

to  catch  them,  are  capital  customers — 'patrons',  I  suppose 
one  ought  to  say ;  but  I  decline  to  be  patronized  by  a  rich 
American.  I  think  'customer',  after  all,  a  much  truer  and 
sincerer  word — ten  thousand  times  as  manly  and  inde- 
pendent." 

"So  I  think  too.  I  hate  patronage.  It  savors  of 
flunkeydom;  betrays  the  toadyism  of  fashionable  art — the 
Tortrait-of-a-Gentleman'  style  of  painting. — But,  oh,  War- 
ren, I'm  so  sorry  the  Rade's  to  be  transported  to  America. 
It's  such  a  graceful,  delicate,  dainty  little  picture.  I  quite 
loved  it.  To  me  that  seems  the  most  terrible  part  of  all 
an  artist's  trials  and  troubles.  There  you  toil  and  moil 
and  slave  and  labor  at  one  of  your  exquisite,  poetical,  self- 
absorbing  pictures;  you  throw  a  part  of  your  life,  a  share 
of  your  soul,  a  piece  of  your  own  inner  spiritual  being,  on 
to  your  simple  square  of  dead  canvas;  you  make  it  live 
and  breathe  and  feel  almost;  you  work  away  at  it,  ab- 
sorbed and  entranced  in  it,  living  in  it  and  dreaming  of  it, 
for  days  and  weeks  and  months  together;  you  give  it  a 
thousand  last  long  loving  touches ;  you  alter  and  correct, 
and  improve  and  modify;  you  wait  till  it  all  absolutely  sat- 
isfies your  own  high  and  exacting  critical  standard;  and 
then,  after  you've  lavished  on  it  your  utmost  care  and  skill 
and  pains — after  you've  learned  to  know  and  to  love  it 
tenderly — after  it's  become  to  you  something  like  your 
own  child — an  offspring  of  your  inmost  and  deepest  nature 
— you  sell  it  away  for  prompt  cash  to  a  rich  American, 
who'll  hang  it  up  in  his  brand-new  drawing-room  at  St 
Louis  or  Chicago  between  two  horrid  daubs  by  fashionable 
London  or  Paris  painters,  and  who'll  say  to  his  friends 
with  a  smile  after  dinner:  'Yes,  that's  a  pretty  little  thing 
enough  in  its  way,  that  tiny  sea-piece  there.  I  gave  forty 
guineas  in  England  for  that:  it's  by  Relf  of  London. — But 
observe  this  splendid  "Cleopatra"  over  here,  just  above  the 
sideboard:  she's  a  real  So-and-so' — torture  itself  will  not 
induce  the  present  chronicler  to  name  the  particular  painter 
of  fashionable  nudities  whom  Elsie  thus  pilloried  on  the 
scaffold  of  her  high  disdain — 'I  paid  for  that,  sir,  a  cool 
twenty  thousand  dollars!'" 

Warren  smiled  a  smile  of  thrilling  pleasure,  and  in- 
vestigated his  boots  with  shy  timidity.  Such  sympathy 


COMING  ROUND.  277 

from  her  outweighed  a  round  dozen  of  American  pur- 
chasers. "Thank  you,  Elsie,"  he  said  simply.  "That's 
quite  true.  I've  felt  it  myself. — But  still,  in  the  end,  all 
good  work,  if  it's  really  good,  will  appeal  somehow,  at 
some  time,  to  somebody,  somewhere.  I  confess  I  often 
envy  authors  in  that  Their  finished  work  is  impressed 
upon  a  thousand  copies,  and  scattered  broadcast  over  all 
the  world.  Sooner  or  later  it's  pretty  sure  to  meet  the 
eyes  of  most  among  those  who  are  capable  of  appreciating 
it. — But  a  painting  is  a  much  more  monopolist  product. 
If  the  wrong  man  happens  at  first  to  buy  it  and  to  carry 
it  into  the  wholly  wrong  society,  the  painter  may  feel  for 
the  moment  his  work  is  lost,  and  his  time  thrown  away, 
so  far  as  any  direct  appreciation  or  loving  sympathy  with 
his  idea  is  concerned. — Still,  Elsie,  it  gets  its  reward  in 
due  time.  When  we're  all  dead  and  gone,  some  soul  will 
look  upon  the  picture  and  be  glad.  And  it's  a  great  thing 
to  have  sold  the  Rade,  anyway,  because  of  the  dear  old 
Mater  and  Edie. — I'm  able  to  do  a  great  deal  more  for 
them  now;  I  hope  I  shall  soon  be  in  a  position  to  keep 
them  comfortably. — And  do  you  know,  somehow,  these 
last  few  years — I'm  ashamed  to  say  it,  but  it's  the  fact 
none  the  less — I've  begun  to  feel  a  sort  of  nascent  desire 
to  be  successful,  Elsie." 

Elsie  dropped  her  voice  a  tone  lower.  ''I'm  sorry  for 
that,  Warren,"  she  answered  shyly. 

"Why  so?" 

Elsie  dissimulated.  "Because  one  of  the  things  I  most 
admired  about  you  when  I  first  knew  you  was  your  sturdy 
desire  to  do  good  work  for  its  own  sake,  and  to  leave  suc- 
cess to  take  care  of  itself  in  the  dim  background." 

"But,  Elsie,  I've  many  more  reasons  now  to  wish  for 
success. — You  know  why — I've  never  told  you,  but  I 
begin  to  hope — I've  ventured  to  hope  the  last  few  months 
— I  know  it's  presumptuous  of  me,  but  still  I  hope — that 
when  I  can  earn  enough  to  make  a  wife  happy — " 

Elsie  stopped  dead  short  at  once  on  the  narrow  path 
that  wound  in  and  out  among  the  clambering  pine-woods, 
and  fronting  him  full,  with  her  parasol  planted  firmly  on 
the  grotmd,  cut  him  off  in  a  desperately  resolute  tone: 
"Warren,  if  I  wouldn't  marry  you  unsuccessful,  you  may 


278  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

be  quite  sure  success  at  any  rate  would  never,  never  in- 
duce me  to  marry  you." 

It  was  the  first  time  in  all  her  life  she  had  said  a  single 
word  about  marriage  before  him,  and  Warren  therefore  at 
once  accepted  it,  paradoxically  but  rightly,  as  a  good 
omen.  "Then  you  love  me,  Elsie?"  he  cried,  all  trembling. 

Elsie's  heart  fluttered  with  painful  tremors.  "Don't 
ask  me,  Warren!"  she  murmured,  thrilling.  "Don't  make 
me  say  so. — Don't  worm  it  out  of  me! — Dear  Warren, 
you  know  I  like  you  dearly.  I  feel  and  have  always  felt 
toward  you  like  a  sister.  After  all  I've  suffered,  don't 
torment  me  any  more. — I  can  never,  never,  never  marry 
you!" 

"But  you  do  love  me,  Elsie?" 

Elsie's  eyes  fell  irresolute  to  the  ground.  It  was  a  hard 
fight  between  love  and  pride.  But  Warren's  pleading  face 
conquered  in  the  end.  "I  do  love  you,  Warren,"  she 
answered  simply. 

"Then  I  don't  mind  the  rest,"  Warren  cried  with  a  joy- 
ous burst,  seizing  her  hand  in  his.  "If  you  love  me,  Elsie, 
I  can  wait  for  ever.  Success  or  no  success,  marriage  or 
no  marriage,  I  can  wait  for  ever.  I  only  want  to  know 
you  love  me." 

"You  will  have  to  wait  for  ever,"  Elsie  answered  low. 
"You  have  made  me  say  the  word,  and  in  spite  of  myself 
I  have  said  it.  I  love  you,  Warren,  but  I  can  never,  never, 
never  marry  you !" 

"And  I  say,"  Edie  Relf  remarked  with  much  incisive- 
ness,  when  Elsie  told  her,  bit  by  bit,  the  whole  story  that 
same  evening  at  the  Villa  Rossa,  "that  you  treated  him 
very  shabbily  indeed,  and  that  Warren's  a  great  deal  too 
good  and  kind  and  sweet  to  you.  Some  girls  don't 
know  when  they're  well  off.  Warren's  a  brick — that's 
what  I  call  him." 

"That's  what  I  call  him,  too,"  Elsie  answered,  half 
tearful.  "At  least  I  would,  if  brick  was  a  word  I  ever 
applied  to  anybody  anywhere.  But  still — I  can  never, 
never,  never  marry  him !" 

"Thank  goodness,"  Edie  said,  with  a  jerk  of  her  head, 
"I  wasn't  born  romantic  and  hysterical  Whenever  any 


ON  TRIAL.  279 

nice  good  fellow  that  I  can  really  like  swims  into  my  ken 
and  asks  me  to  marry  him — which  unfortunately  none  of 
the  nice  good  fellows  of  my  acquaintance  show  the  slight- 
est inclination  at  present  to  do — I  shall  answer  them 
promptly,  'Like  a  bird — Arthur/  or  Thomas,  or  Guy,  or 
Walter,  or  Reginald,  or  whatever  else  his  nice  good  name 
may  happen  to  be — Mr.  Hatherley's  is  Arthur — and  pro- 
ceed at  once  to  make  him  happy  forever.  But  some 
people  seem  to  prefer  tantalizing  them.  For  my  own 
part,  my  dear,  I've  a  distinct  preference  for  making  men 
happy  whenever  possible.  I  was  born  to  make  a  good 
man  happy,  and  I'd  make  him  happy  with  the  greatest 
pleasure  in  life,  if  only  the  good  man  would  recognize 
my  abilities  for  the  production  of  happiness,  and  give  me 
the  desired  opportunity  for  translating  my  benevolent 
wishes  toward  him  into  actual  practice.  But  good  men 
are  painfully  scarce  nowadays.  They  don't  swarm.  They 
retire  bashfully.  Very  few  of  them  seem  to  float  by  acci- 
dent in  their  gay  shallops  toward  the  port  of  San  Remo." 


CHAPTER  XXXII. 
ON  TRIAL. 

Matters  at  Whitestrand  had  been  going,  meanwhile  from 
bad  to  worse.  Winifred  never  spoke  another  word  to 
Hugh  about  Elsie's  watch.  Her  pride  prevented  her. 
She  would  not  stoop  to  demand  an  explanation.  And 
Hugh  had  no  explanation  of  his  own  to  volunteer.  No 
ready  lie  rose  spontaneous  to  his  lips.  He  dropped  the 
subject,  then  and  forever. 

But  the  question  of  the  encroachments  could  not  be 
quite  so  cavalierly  dropped;  it  pressed  itself  insidiously 
and  silently  upon  Hugh's  attention.  An  eminent  engineer 
came  down  from  London  to  inspect  the  sand-drifts,  shortly 
after  Hatherley's  visit.  By  that  time,  the  sand  had  risen 
high  on  the  post  of  the  aggressive  notice-board  which 
informed  the  would-be  tourist  explorer,  with  the  usual 


280  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

churlishness  and  the  usual  ignorance  of  English 
procedure  that  Trespassers  would  be  Prosecuted 
with  the  Utmost  Rigor  of  the  Law.  The  ocean, 
however,  refused  to  be  terrorized,  and  trespassed 
unabashed  in  the  very  face  of  the  alarming  notice.  Hugh 
took  his  new  ally  down  to  inspect  the  threatened  corner 
of  the  estate.  The  eminent  engineer  stroked  a  reflective 
chin  and  remarked  cheerfully  with  a  meditative  smile  that 
currents  were  very  ticklish  things  to  deal  with,  on  their 
own  ground:  that  when  you  interfered  with  the  natural 
course  of  a  current,  you  never  could  tell  which  way  it 
would  go  next;  and  that  diverting  it  was  much  like  taking 
a  leap  in  the  dark,  as  far  as  probable  consequences  to  the 
shore  were  concerned.  After  which  reassuring  vaticina- 
tions, the  eminent  engineer  proceeded  at  once  with  perfect 
confidence  to  erect  an  expensive  and  ingenious  break- 
water off  the  site  of  the  poplar,  which  strained  the  slender 
balloon  of  Hugh's  remaining  credit  to  the  very  verge  of  Its 
utmost  bursting  point.  A  year  passed  by  in  the  work  of 
building  and  throwing  out  the  breakwater:  and  as  soon 
as  it  was  finished,  with  much  acclamation,  a  scour  set  in 
just  round  its  sides  which  ate  away  the  grounds  behind 
even  faster  than  ever.  The  eminent  engineer,  pocketing 
his  check,  stroked  his  chin  once  more  in  placid  content- 
ment, and  observed  with  the  complacency  of  a  scientific 
looker-on:  ''Just  as  I  told  you.  It's  impossible  to  calcu- 
late the  exact  effect  of  these  things  beforehand.  The 
scour  will  do  more  harm  than  the  sea  did.  We  have  the 
satisfaction  of  knowing,  however,  that  we've  done  our 
duty.  Perhaps,  now,  the  safest  thing  for  the  estate  would 
be  to  turn  right  round  and  pull  it  all  down  again." 

The  estate,  in  fact,  was  simply  doomed.  Aeolian,  Pac- 
tolian,  indeed:  ah  me,  the  irony  of  it!  Those  Aeolian 
sands  were  overwhelming  Whitestrand.  The  poplar 
had  formed  its  one  frail  support.  In  destroying  the  pop- 
lar, Hugh  had  simply  outwitted  himself.  No  earthly 
science  could  now  repair  that  fatal  step.  Physicians  were 
in  vain.  Engineers  and  breakwaters  were  of  no  avail. 
The  cruel  crawling  sea  had  begun  remorselessly  to  claim  its 
own,  and  day  after  day  it  claimed  it  piecemeal. 

Nor  was  that  all.     Hugh's  affairs  were  getting  more  and 


ON  TRIAL.  281 

more  involved  in  other  ways  also.  Those  were  the  days 
of  the  decline  of  Squiredom.  Agricultural  depression  had 
told  upon  the  rents.  Turnips  were  a  failure.  Mangolds 
were  feeble.  Hessian  fly  had  made  waste  straw  of  old 
Grimes'  wheat  crops.  Barley  had  never  done  so  badly 
for  years.  Foot-and-mouth  disease  and  pleuro-pneu- 
monia  had  combined  with  American  competition  and 
Australian  mutton  to  lower  prices  and  to  starve  landlords. 
Time  was,  indeed,  when  Hugh  would  have  laughed  aloud 
at  the  bare  idea  of  being  seriously  affected  by  the  fall  in 
corn  or  taking  a  personal  interest  in  the  ridiculous  details 
of  the  diseases  of  cattle.  Such  loathsome  things  were  the 
business  of. the  veterinaries.  Now,  however,  he  laughed 
on  the  wrong  side  of  his  mouth:  he  complained  bitterly 
of  the  supineness  of  government  in  not  stamping  out  the 
germs  of  rinderpest,  and  in  taking  so  little  care  of  the 
soil  of  England.  Buff  all  his  days  till  then,  by  political 
conviction,  he  began  to  go  over  to  the  Blues  out  of  sheer 
chagrin.  He  doubted  the  wisdom  of  free  trade,  and  co- 
quetted openly  with  the  local  apostles  of  retributive  pro- 
tection. But  rents  came  in  worse  and  worse  for  all  that, 
at  each  successive  Whitestrand  audit.  The  interest  on 
the  mortgage  was  hard  to  raise,  and  the  servants'  wages 
at  the  Hall,  it  was  whispered  about,  had  fallen  into  arrears 
for  a  whole  quarter.  Clearly  the  young  Squire  must  be 
short  of  funds;  and  nothing  was  afloat  to  help  his  ex- 
chequer into  safer  waters. 

But  drowning  men  cling  to  the  proverbial  straw.  For 
his  own  part,  Hugh  had  high  hopes  at  first  of  his  "Life's 
Philosophy."  He  had  trimmed  his  little  bark  most  cun- 
ningly, he  thought,  to  tempt  the  stormy  sea  of  popular 
approbation.  There  was  the  big  long  poem  for  heavy  bal- 
last, and  the  songs  and  occasional  pieces  in  his  lightest 
vein  for  cork  belts  to  redress  the  balance.  Sooner  or  later, 
the  world  must  surely  catch  glimpses  of  the  truth,  that  it 
still  inclosed  a  great  "unknown  Poet!  He  waited  for  the 
storm  of  applause  to  begin;  the  critics  would  doubtless 
soon  get  up  their  concerted  paean.  But  one  day,  a  few 
weeks  after  the  volume  was  published,  he  took  up  a  copy 
of  the  "Bystander,"  that  most  superior  review — the  special 
organ  of  his  own  special  clique — and  read  in  it  with 


282  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

hushed  breath  ...  a  hostile  notice  to  his  new  and  hope- 
ful volume.  His  heart  sank  as  he  read  and  read.  Line 
after  line,  the  sickening  sense  of  failure  deepened  upon 
him.  It  had  not  been  so  in  the  old  days.  Then,  the 
critics  had  hasted  to  bring  him  butter  in  a  lordly  dish. 
But  now,  all  that  was  utterly  changed.  He  read  with  a 
cheek  flushed  with  indignation.  At  last,  the  review 
touched  bottom.  "Mr.  Massinger,"  said  his  critic  in  con- 
cluding his  notice,  "has  long  since  retired,  we  aH  know,  to 
Lowther  Arcadia.  There,  among  the  mimic  ranges  of 
the  Suffolk  sandhills — a  doll's  paradise  of  dale  and  moun- 
tain— he  has  betaken  himself  with  his  pretty  little  pipe  to 
the  green  side  of  a  pretty  little  knoll,  and  has  tuned  his 
throat  to  a  pretty  little  lay,  all  about  a  series  of  pretty 
little  ladies,  of  the  usual  insipid  Lowther-Arcadian  style 
of  beauty.  Now,  these  waxen-faced  damsels  somehow 
fail  to  interest  us.  Their  cheeks  are  all  most  becomingly 
red ;  their  eyes  are  all  most  liquidly  blue ;  their  locks  are 
all  of  the  yellowest  tow;  and  their  philosophy  is  a  cheap 
and  ineffective  mixture  of  the  Elegant  Extracts  with  the 
choicest  old  crusted  English  morals  of  immemorial  pro- 
verbial wisdom.  In  short,  they  are  unfortunately  stuffed 
with  sawdust.  The  long  poem  which  gives  a  title  to  the 
volume,  on  the  other  hand,  though  molluscofd  in  its  flab- 
biness,  is  as  ambitious  as  it  is  feeble,  and  as  dull  as  it  is 
involved.  Here,  for  example,  selected  from  some  five 
hundred  equally  inflated  stanzas,  are  the  nKxfest  views  Mr. 
Massinger  now  holds  on  his  own  position  in  the  material 
Cosmos.  The  scene,  we  ought  to  explain,  is  laid  in  Ox- 
ford: the  time,  midnight  or  a  little  later:  and  the  Bard 
speaks  in  propria  persona: — 


"  'The  city  lies  below  me  wrapped  in  slumber; 

Mute  and  unmoved  in  all  her  streets  she  liee: 
'Mid  rapid  thoughts  that  throng  me  without  number 

Plashes  the  phantom  of  an  old  surmise. 
Her  hopes  and  fears  and  griefs  are  all  sospentod: 

Ten  thousand  souls  throughout  her  preomote  take 
Sleep,  in  whose  bosom  life  and  death  are  blended, 

And  I  alone  awake. 


ON  TRIAL.  283 

"  'Am  I  alone  the  solitary  center 

Of  all  the  seeming  universe  around, 
With  mocking  senses,  through  whose  portals  enter 

Unmeaning  phantasies  of  sight  and  sound? 
Are  ail  the  countless  minds  wherewith  I  people 

The  empty  forms  that  float  before  my  eyes 
Vain  as  the  cloud  that  girds  the  distant  steeple 

With  snowy  canopies? 


"  'Yet  though  the  world  be  but  myself  unfolded — 

Soul  bent  again  on  soul  in  mystic  play — 
No  less  each  sense  and  thought  and  act  is  moulded 

By  dead  necessities  I  may  not  sway. 
Some  mightier  power  against  my  will  can  move  me; 

Some  potent  nothing  force  and  overawe: 
Though  I  be  all  that  is,  I  feel  above  me 

The  godhead  of  blind  law!' 

"Seven  or  eight  pages  of  this  hysterical,  cartilaginous, 
invertebrate  nonsense  have  failed  to  convince  us  that  Mr. 
Massinger  is  really,  as  he  seems  implicitly  to  believe,  the 
hub  of  the  universe,  and  the  sole  intelligent  or  sentient 
being  within  the  entire  circle  of  organic  creation.  Many 
other  poets,  indeed,  have  thought  the  same,  but  few  have 
been  so  candid  as  to  express  their  opinion.  We  are 
tempted,  therefore,  to  conclude  our  notice  of  our  Bard's 
singular  views  as  to  Mr.  Massinger's  Place  in  Nature 
with  a  small  apologue,  in  his  own  best  manner,  which  we 
will  venture  to  entitle — 

"  'MARINE  PHILOSOPHY  IN  SILLY  SUFFOLK. 

"  'A  jellyfish  swam  an  East  Anglian  sea, 
And  he  said,  "This  world,  it  consists  of  me. 
There's  nothing  above,  and  there's  nothing  below, 
That  a  jellyfish  ever  can  possibly  know — 
Since  we've  got  no  sight  or  hearing  or  smell- 
Beyond  what  our  single  sense  can  tell. 
Now  all  we  can  learn  from  the  sense  of  touch 
Is  the  fact  of  our  feelings,  viewed  as  such; 
But  to  thinjk  they  have  any  external  cause 
Is  an  inference  clean  against  logical  laws. 
Again,  to  suppose,  as  I've  hitherto  done, 
There  are  other  jellyfish  under  the  sun 
Is  a  pure  assumption  that  can't  be  backed 
By  one  jot  of  proof  or  one  single  fact: 


284  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

And  being  a  bit  of  a  submarine  poet, 
I've  written  some  amateur  lines  to  show  it. 
In  fact  (like  Hume)  I  distinctly  doubt 
If  there's  anything  else  at  all  about: 
For  the  universe  simply  centers  in  me, 
And  if  I  were  not,  why  nothing  would  be!" 
Just  then,  a  shark,  who  was  passing  by, 
Gobbled  him  down,  in  the  twink  of  an  eye: 
And  he  died,  with  a  few  convulsive  twists: 
— But,  somehow,  the  universe  still  exists.'  " 


Hugh  laid  down  the  "Bystander"  on  the  table  by  his  side 
with  a  burning  sense  of  wrong  and  indignation.  The 
measure  he  himself  had  often  meted  to  others,  therewithal 
had  it  been  meted  to  him ;  and  he  realized  now  in  his  own 
person  the  bitterness  of  the  stings  he  had  often  inflicted  out 
of  pure  wantonness  on  endless  young  and  anonymous 
authors.  And  how  unjust,  too,  this  sweeping  condem- 
nation, when  he  came  to  think  of  his  splendid  "Ode  to 
Manetho,"  his  touching  "Lines  on  the  Death  of  a  Skye 
Terrier,"  his  exquisitely  humorous  "Song  of  Fee-faw 
him !"  He  knew  they  were  good,  every  verse  and  word-  of 
them.  This  was  a  crushing  review,  and  from  his  own 
familiar  friend  as  well ;  for  he  saw  at  once  from  that  un- 
mistakable style  that  it  was  Mitchison  who  had  penned 
this  cruel  criticism.  Cheyne  Row  had  clearly  cast  off 
her  recalcitrant  son.  He  was  to  it  now  an  outcast  and  a 
pariah,  a  wicked  deserter  to  the  camp  of  the  Philistines. 

At  the  same  moment,  Winifred,  on  the  sofa  opposite, 
coughing  her  dry  little  cough  from  time  to  time,  was 
flushing  painfully  over  some  funny  passage  or  other  she 
was  reading  with  much  gusto  in  the  "Charing  Cross  Re- 
view." They  seldom  spoke  unnecessarily  to  one  another 
nowadays.  They  were  leading  a  life  of  mutual  avoidance, 
as  far  as  possible,  communicating  only  on  strictly  practical 
topics,  when  occasion  demanded,  and  not  even  then  in 
the  most  amicable  spirit.  But  just  at  that  moment,  Wini- 
fred's flushed  face  filled  Hugh  with  intense  and  profound 
suspicion.  What  could  she  be  reading  that  made  her 
blush  so? 

"Let  me  see  it,"  he  cried,  as  Winifred  tried  *c  smuggle 
away  the  paper  unseen  under  a  pile  of  mag>azi«e6. 


ON  TRIAL.  28E 

''Xo,  no!  There's  nothing  in  it!"  Winifred  answered 
nervously. 

"I  must  see,"  Hugh  went  on,  and  snatched  it  from- her 
hand.  Winifred  fought  hard  to  tear  or  to  destroy  it. 
But  Hugh  was  too  strong  for  her.  He  caught  it  and 
opened  it.  A  single  phrase  on  a  torn  page  caught  his 
eye  as  he  did  so.  "Verses  addressed  to  Mr.  Massinger 
of  Whitestrand  Hall,  formerly  a  poet."  He  glanced  at 
the  end.  They  were  signed  "A.  H." — It  was  Arthur 
Hatherley. 

Bohemia  had  declared  open  war  upon  him.  He  saw 
why.  Those  tell-tale  words,  "Of  Whitestrand  Hall," 
struck  the  keynote  of  its  virtuous  indignation.  And  that 
fellow  Relf,  too,  had  poisoned  the  mind  of  Cheyne  Row 
against  him.  Henceforth,  he  might  expect  no  quarter 
thence.  His  own  familiar  friands  had  turned  to  rend  him. 
No  more  could  he  hope  to  roll  the  cheerful  log.  His 
dream  of  literary  glory  was  gone — clean  gone — vanished 
for  ever. 

Winifred  had  lifted  the  paper  which  Hugh  flung  from 
him,  and  was  skimming  the  "Bystander"  review  mean- 
while. Her  cheek  flushed  hotter  and  redder  still.  But 
she  said  never  a  word  in  any  way  about  it.  She  wouldn't 
seem  to  have  noticed  the  attack.  "Shall  I  accept  Lady 
Mortmayne's  invitation?"  she  asked  with  a  chilly  heart- 
sinking. 

Bohemia  had  clearly  turned  against  them ;  but  Philistia 
at  least,  Philistia  was  left  to  console  their  bosoms.  If  one 
can't  be  a  poet,  one  can  at  any  rate  be  a  snob.  In  the 
bitterness  of  his  heart,  Hugh  answered:  "Yes.  Go  any- 
where on  earth  to  a  body  with  a  handle."  Then  he  tried 
to  rouse  himself,  to  put  on  a  cheerful  and  unconcerned 
manner.  "I  like  to  patronize  art,"  he  went  on  with  a 
hard  smile,  "and  as  a  work  of  art  I  consider  Lady  Mort- 
mayne  almost  perfect." 

Winifred  laid  down  her  paper  on  the  table.  "What 
shall  I  say  to  her?"  she  asked  glassily.  She  was  a  timid 
letter-writer.  Even  since  their  estrangement,  Hugh  most 
often  dictated  her  society  notes  for  her. 

"Dear  Lady  Mortmayne,  we  shall  have  great  pleas- 
ure— "  Hugh  began  with  vigor. 


286  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

"Isn't  'we  have  great  pleasure'  better  English,  Hugh?" 
Winifred  asked  quietly,  as  she  examined  her  nib  with  close 
attention. 

"No,"  Hugh  blurted  back,  "certainly  not.  Shall  have 
great  pleasure's  quite  good  enough  for  me,  so  I  suppose 
it's  good  enough  for  you,  too — isn't  it?" 

"I  don't  know  about  that.  Literary  English  and  society 
English  are  two  distinct  dialects." 

Hugh  bit  his  lip  with  an  angry  look.  He  was  getting 
positively  cruel  now.  "If  you  can  write  so  well,"  he  mut- 
tered between  his  clenched  teeth,  "write  it  yourself.  'Great 
pleasure  in  accepting  your  kind  invitation  for  Thursday 
next' " 

"Doesn't  'Thursday  the  i/th'  sound  rather  more  for- 
mal?" Winifred  asked  once  more,  looking  up  from  her 
paper.  • 

"Of  course  it  does.  That's  just  my  reason  for  carefully 
avoiding  it.  Why  on  earth  should  you  go  out  of  your 
way  to  be  so  precious  formal?  Thursday  next's  what 
everybody  says  in  conversation.  Write  exactly  as  you 
always  speak.  Formal,  indeed!  Such  absurd  rubbish 
with  a  next-door  neighbor!" 

"But  she  writes,  'Lady  Mortmayne  requests  the  pleas- 
ure.' I  think  I  ought  to  answer  in  the  third  person." 

"That's  because  she  was  sending  out  ever  so  many  invi- 
tations at  once,  all  exactly  alike.  'Lady  Mortmayne  re- 
quests the  bother — I  mean  the  pleasure — of  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
So-and-so's  company.'  It's  different  when  you're  answer- 
ing people  you  know  intimately.  You  needn't  be  abso- 
lutely wooden  then.  Besides,  you've  got  to  make  that 
long  explanation  about  those  dahlia  roots  you  remember 
you  promised  her.  No  literary  man  in  all  England  would 
trust  himself  to  write  so  complicated  a  letter  as  the  dahlia 
roots  must  make,  in  the  third  person.  Our  language  isn't 
adapted  to  it;  it  can't  be  done.  But  fools  rush  in  where 
angels  fear  to  tread,  we  all  know  perfectly.  Write  it,  if 
you  choose,  in  the  third  person." 

"I  think  I  will.  I'll  begin  all  over  again.  Thanks 
very  much  for  calling  me  a  fool.  I  won't  return  the  com- 
pliment and  call  you  an  angel.  'Mr.  and  Mrs.  Massinger 
have  great  pleasure — '" 


ON  TRIAL.  287 

"Will  have  great  pleasure!" 

"Have  great  pleasure.  I  prefer  it  so,  thank  you.  It's 
better  English.  'Have  great  pleasure  in  accepting  Lady 
Mortmayne's  kind  invitation  for  Thursday  the  i/th,  and 
will  bring  the  dahlias  she  promised — '  " 

"Who  promised?     Lady  Mortmayne?'' 

"Oh,  bother!  I  mean  'the  dahlias  Mrs.  Massinger 
promised,  which  she  would  have  brought  before,  but  she 
was  unfortunately  prevented  by  her  gardener  having  quite 
inadvertently — " 

"For  heaven's  sake,  split  it  up  into  short  sentences," 
Hugh  cried,  on  tenter-hooks.  "I  couldn't  let  such  a  note 
as  that  go  out  of  my  house — I  mean,  our  house,  Winifred 
— if  my  life  depended  upon  it.  A  man  of  letters  allow  his 
wife  to  make  such  an  exhibition  of  impossible  English! 
I  won't  dictate  to  you  in  the  third  person — the  thing's  im- 
possible: I'll  be  no  party  to  murdering  our  mother  tongue 
— but  you  might  at  least  say,  'Mrs.  Massinger  will  at  the 
same  time  bring  the  dahlias  she  promised  Lady  Mort- 
mayne. They  would  have  been  sent  before' — and  so 
forth,  and  so  forth,  in  logical  clauses.  My  English  style 
may  not  perhaps  suit  the  exalted  standard  of  our  friends 
in  the  'Bystander,'  but  I  can  at  least  avoid  running  a  whole 
letter  into  one  long  tortuous  snake-like  sentence.  I  never 
lose  myself  in  the  sands  of  rhetoric.  My  English  will 
parse  if  it  won't  construe." 

"I  wish  I  was  clever,"  Winifred  said,  growing  red,  "and 
then  I  could  write  my  own  letters  without  you." 

"'Be  good,  my  child,  and  let  who  will  be  clever:' 
Charles  Kingsley,"  Hugh  quoted  provokingly.  "'An 
honest  man's  the  noblest  work  of  God:'  Alexander  Pope. 
(I  think  it  was  Pope:  or  was  it  Sam  Johnson?)  A  placid 
woman  runs  him  close,  ecod:  Hugh  Massinger.  Ecod's 
a  powerful  weak  rhyme,  I,  admit,  but  what  can  you  expect 
from  a  mere  impromptu?  I  only  wish  all  women  were 
placid.  Well,  the  moral  of  these  three  immortal  lines, 
selected  from  the  works  of  three  poets  in  three  different 
ages  born  (Dryden),  is  simply  this — you  do  very  well  as 
you  are,  Winifred.  Don't  seek  to  be  clever.  It  doesn't 
suit  you.  Take  my  advice.  Leave  it  alone— For  if  you 
do,  you'll  find  it  in  the  end  a  complete  failure." 


288  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

"Hugh!    You  insult  me." 

"Very  well  then,  my  dear.  You  will  be  able  to  exercise 
Christian  patience  and  resignation  in  pocketing  the  insult 
— as  I  have  to  do  from  you  very  often." 

Winifred  shut  down  her  writing-case  with  a  bang  and 
burst,  not  into  tears,  but  into  an  uncontrollable  fit  of  vio- 
lent coughing.  She  coughed  and  coughed  till  her  face 
was  purple  and  livid  with  the  effort.  Hugh  watched  her 
silently,  as  hard  as  adamant.  She  had  often  coughed  this 
way  of  late.  The  habit  was  growing  on  her.  Hugh 
thought  she  ought  to  cure  herself  of  it" 

"I  shall  go  up  next  week  again  to  consult  Sir  Anthony 
Wraxall,"  she  said  at  last,  when  she  recovered  her  breath, 
gasping  and  choking.  "Will  you  go  with  me,  Hugh?" 

"We've  no  cash  now  to  waste  on  junketing  and  gadding 
about  in  town,"  Hugh  answered  gloomily.  "A  pretty 
time  to  talk  about  riotous  living,  with  the  sen-ants'  wages 
all  overdue,  and  duns  bothering  at  the  door  for  their 
wretched  money.  My  presence  could  hardly  give  you  any 
appreciable  pleasure.  You  can  stop  at  the  dingy  old  lodg- 
ings in  Albert  Row,  and  Mrs.  Bouverie  Barton  will  help 
gad  about  with  you.  You  can  trapes  together  over  half 
London." 

Winifred  bowed  her  poor  head  down  in  silence.  Her 
heart  was  sick.  It  was  full  to  bursting.  This  was  all 
she  had  bought  with  the  fee-simple  of  Whitestrand. 

That  moment  the  servant  came  in  with  a  paper  on  a 
tray.  "What  is  it?"  Hugh  asked,  glancing  listlessly 
toward  it. 

"It's  the  Queen's  taxes,  sir,"  the  maid  answered;  the 
financial  crisis  had  long  since  compelled  them  to  discharge 
their  last  surviving  footman. 

"Tell  the  Queen  she  must  call  again,"  Hugh  burst  out 
savagely.  "She  can't  have  them.  She  may  whistle  for 
her  money. — Queen's  taxes  indeed!  The  butcher  and 
the  baker'll  be  calling  to  get  their  bills  paid  next!  But 
they  won't  succeed;  that's  one  comfort.  You  can't  get 
blood  out  of  *  stone,  thank  goodness." 


AN  ARTISTIC  EVENT.  289 

CHAPTER  XXXIII. 

AN  ARTISTIC  EVENT. 

"Mr.  Warren  Relf,"  said  the  daintily  etched  invitation 
card,  "requests  the  pleasure  of  a  visit  from  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Bouverie  Barton  and  friends  to  a  Private  View  of  his 
Paintings  and  Water-color  Sketches,  on  Saturday,  Oc- 
tober the  3rd,  from  2:30  to  6  p.  m.,  at  128,  Bletchingley 
Road,  South  Kensington." 

Such  a  graceful  little  invitation  card  never  was  seen, 
neatly  designed  by  the  artist  himself,  with  a  bold  flight  of 
sea-gulls  engaged  in  winging  their  way  across  the  upper 
left-hand  corner ;  and  a  stretch  of  stormy  waves,  bestridden 
by  a  fishing-smack  in  full  career  before  the  brisk  breeze, 
occupying  the  larger  part  of  its  broad  face  in  very  delicate 
and  exquisite  outline.  When  Winifred  Massinger  saw 
it  carelessly  stuck  aside  among  a  heap  of  others  on  Mrs. 
Bouverie  Barton's  occasional  table  in  South  Audley 
Street,  she  took  it  up  with  a  start  and  examined  it  closely. 
"Mr.  Warren  Relf!"  she  cried  in  a  tone  of  some  surprise. 
"Then  you  know  him,  Mrs.  Barton?  I  didn't  remember 
he  was  one  of  your  circle.  But  there,  of  course  you  know 
everybody. — What  a  sweet  little  etching!" 

"What?  Mr.  Warren  Relf?— Oh  yes,  I  know  him. 
Not,  I'm  afraid,  a  very  successful  artist,  as  yet;  but  they 
say  he  has  merit — in  his  own  way,  merit.  And  he's  rising 
now;  a  coming  man,  I'm  told,  in  his  special  line.  Mr. 
Mitchison  thinks  his  delicacy  of  touch  and  purity  of  color 
are  something  really  quite  remarkable.  I'm  going  to  see 
these  new  pictures  of  his  on  Saturday,  if  I  can  sandwich 
him  in  edgeways  between  the  Society  for  the  Higher  Edu- 
cation of  Women  and  the  Richter  concert  or  tea  at  the 
MacKinnons'.  I've  only  five  engagements  for  Saturday. 
Quite  an  empty  day. — Have  you  got  a  card  for  the  private 
view  yourself,  dear?" 

"No,"  Winifred  answered  with  a  slight  blush.  "My 
husband  knew  Mr.  Relf  quite  intimately  once  upon  a  time; 
but  the  fact  is,  somehow,  since  our  marriage,  a  coolness 
seems  to  have  sprung  up  between  them — I  don't  know 


290  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

why;  perhaps  from  the  ordinary  human  perversity.  At 
any  rate,  Hugh  won't  even  so  much  as  see  him  now.  Mr. 
Relf's  been  yachting  down  our  way  the  last  two  or  three 
summers,  and  Hugh  positively  wouldn't  let  me  ask  him  in 
to  have  a  cup  of  afternoon  tea  with  us  in  the  garden  at 
VVhitestrand. — But  I  should  like  to  see  his  new  pictures  im- 
mensely.— I  used  to  think  his  pieces  awfully  funny,  I 
remember,  and  quite  meaningless,  in  the  old  days,  down 
in  dear  old  Suffolk;  but  Mr.  Hatherley  tells  me  that  was 
only  my  unregenerate  nature,  and  that  they're  really  beau- 
tiful— a  great  deal  too  good  for  me.  He  considers  Mr.  Relf 
a  very  great  painter,  and  has  wonderful  hopes  about  his 
artistic  future.  I  wish  I  could  find  out  what  I  thought 
of  them  nowadays,  after  my  taste's  been  educated  and 
turned  topsy-turvy  by  contact  with  so  much  aesthetic 
society." 

"Well,  then,  would  you  like  to  go  with  us,  dear?"  Mrs. 
Bouverie  Barton  asked  kindly. 

Winifred  turned  over  the  card  with  a  wistful  look.  "It 
says,  'Mr.  and  Mrs.  Bouverie  Barton  and  friends,'"  she 
repeated  with  emphasis.  "So  of  course  you  can  take  who- 
ever you  like  with  you,  can't  you,  Mrs.  Barton? — Saturday 
the  3rd,  from  2:30  to  6  p.  m. — I  think  I  might. — I-'ll  risk 
it  anyhow. — That'd  suit  me  admirably.  My  appointment 
with  Sir  Anthony's  for  two  precisely." 

"Your  appointment  with  Sir  Anthony?"  Mrs.  Barton 
echoed  in  a  grieved  undertone. 

Winifred  coughed — such  a  nasty  dry  little  hacking 
cough.  "Why,  yes,  Sir  Anthony  Wraxall,"  she  answered, 
checking  herself  with  some  difficulty  from  a  brief 
paroxysm  of  her  usual  trouble.  "I've  come  up  this  week, 
in  fact,  on  purpose  to  consult  him.  Hugh  made  me  come, 
my  lungs  have  been  so  awfully  odd  lately.  I've  seen  Sir 
Anthony  twice  already;  and  he's  punched  me  and  pum- 
melled me  and  pulled  me  about  till  there's  not  much  left 
of  me  whole  anywhere ;  so  on  Saturday  he  means  by  sum- 
mary process  to  get  rid  of  the  rest  of  me  altogether.  Would 
you  mind  calling  for  me  at  Sir  Anthony's  at  three  sharp? 
He  gives  me  an  hour,  a  whole  hour;  an  unusual  con- 
cession for  a  man  whose  time's  money — worth  a  golden 
guinea  every  three  minutes." 


AN  ARTISTIC   EVENT.  291 

"My  dear,"  Mrs.  Bouverie  Barton  put  in  tenderly — 
everybody  knows  Mrs.  Bouverie  Barton,  the  most  charm- 
ing and  sympathetic  hostess  in  literary  London — "you 
hardly  seem  fit  to  go  running  about  town  sight-seeing  at 
present. — Does  Mr.  Massinger  seriously  realize  how  ex- 
tremely weak  and  ill  you  are? — It  scarcely  seems  to  me 
you  ought  to  be  troubling  your  poor  little  head  about 
private  views  or  anything  of  the  sort  with  a  cough  like 
that  upon  you." 

"Oh,  it  isn't  much,  I  assure  you,  dear  Mrs.  Barton," 
Winifred  answered  with  a  quiet  sigh,  the  tears  coming  up 
into  her  eyes  as  she  spoke  at  the  touch  of  sympathy. 
"Hugh  doesn't  think  it's  at  all  serious.  I've  been  a  good 
deal  troubled  and  worried  of  late,  that's  all. — Sir  An- 
thony 11  set  me  all  right  soon. — You  see  I've  had  a  great 
deal  of  trouble."  The  tears  stood  brimming  her  poor  dim 
eyes.  Wife  and  mother  as  she  had  been  already,  she  was 
still  young,  very,  very  young.  Her  face  looked  pale 
and  sadly  pathetic. 

Mrs.  Bouverie  Barton  raised  the  small  white  hand  gently 
in  her  own.  It  was  thin  and  delicate,  with  long  and 
slender  consumptive  fingers.  Mrs.  Barton's  mouth  grew 
graver  for  a  moment.  That  poor  child  had  suffered  much, 
she  thought  to  herself,  and  she  had  probably  much  to 
suffer  in  future.  How  much,  indeed,  it  was  not  in  Wini- 
fred's cramped  little  nature  to  confide  to  any  one. 

At  128,  Bletchingley  Road,  the  ancestral  home  of  all  the 
Relfs — for  one  generation — a  tiny  eight-roomed  London 
house  in  a  side-street  of  intense  South  Kensington — all 
was  bustle  and  flutter  and  feverish  excitement.  Edie  Relf 
to-day  was  absolutely  in  her  element.  It  was  her  joy  in 
life,  indeed,  to  compass  the  Impossible.  And  the  Impossi- 
ble now  stared  her  frankly  in  the  face  in  the  concrete  shape 
of  a  geometrical  absurdity.  She  had  undertaken  to  make 
the  less  contain  the  greater,  all  the  axioms  of  Euclid  to  the 
contrary  notwithstanding.  What  are  space  and  time  to  a 
clever  woman?  Of  no  more  importance  in  her  scheme 
of  things  than  to  Emmanuel  Kant  or  to  Shadworth  Hodg- 
son. The  Relfs  had  issued  no  fewer  than  three  hundred 
and  twenty  separate  invitation  cards,  each  with  that  ex- 


292  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

tensible  india-rubber  clause,  "and  friends,"  so  capable  of 
indefinite  and  incalculable  expansion.  Now,  the  little 
front  drawing  room  at  Bletchingley  Road  could  just  be 
induced,  when  the  furniture  was  abolished  by  Act  of  Par- 
liament, and  the  piano  removed  upstairs  to  the  back  bed- 
room, to  accommodate  at  a  pinch  some  thirty-five  persons, 
mostly  chairless.  Three  hundred  and  twenty  invited 
guests,  plus  an  indefinite  expansion  under  the  casual  cate- 
gory of  desultory  friends,  cannot  be  reduced  by  any  known 
process  of  arithmetic  or  mensuration  into  the  limits  of  a 
space  barely  sufficient  to  supply  standing-room  for  thirty- 
five.  But  that  was  just  where  Eclie  Relf's  organizing  gen- 
ius knew  itself  in  the  presence  of  an  emergency  worthy  of 
its  steel.  When  an  insoluble  difficulty  dawned  serene  upon 
her  puzzled  view,  Edie  Relf's  spirits  rose  at  once,  Antaeus- 
like,  to  the  occasion,  and  soared  beyond  the  narrow  and 
hampering  limitations  of  mundane  geometry.  "My  dear 
Edie,"  Mrs.  Relf  cried  in  a  voice  of  despair,  "we  can  never, 
never,  never  pack  them  in  anyhow." 

"Herrings  in  a  box  would  find  themselves  comparative- 
ly roomy  and  comfortable,"  Warren  murmured,  with  a 
glance  of  black  despondency  round  the  four  scanty  walls 
of  the  tiny  drawing-room.  "How  on  earth  could  you  ever 
think  of  asking  so  many?" 

"Nonsense,  my  dears!"  Edie  answered  with  a  confident 
smile  that  presaged  victory.  "Leave  that  to  me.  It's 
my  proper  business.  I  see  it  all.  The  commanding  of- 
ficer should  never  be  hampered  by  futile  predictions  of 
defeat  and  dishonor.  Of  course  they  won't  come,  the 
greater  part  of  them.  They  never  do  rush,  I  regret  to 
say,  to  inspect  your  immortal  works,  Warren.  But  still 
we  must  arrange,  for  all  that,  as  if  we  expected  the  whole 
united  British  people — in  case  of  a  rush,  don't  you  know, 
mother.  Some  day,  I  feel  certain  the  rush  will  arrive; 
a  Duke  will  invest  his  spare  cash  in  'Off  the  Nore ;  Morn- 
ing,' and  hang  it  up  visibly  to  all  beholders  on  the  silver- 
gilt  walls  of  his  own  dining-room.  The  picture-buying 
classes,  with  rolls  of  money  jingling  and  clinking  in  their 
trousers'  pockets,  will  see  and  admire  that  magnificent 
chef-d'oeuvre — or  at  least,  if  they  don't  know  how  to  ad- 
mire, will  determine  to  back  a  Duke's  judgment — and  will 


AN  ARTISTIC  EVENT.  2d3 

hurry  down  in  their  millions,  with  blank  check-books 
protruding  from  their  flaps,  to  crowd  the  studio  and' buy 
up  the  lot  at  a  valuation.  I  confess  even  I  should  have 
some  difficulty  in  seating  and  providing  tea  for  the  mil- 
lions. But  this  lot's  easy — a  mere  bagatelle.  Let  me 
see.  We've  only  sent  out  cards,  I  think,  for  a  poor  trifle 
of  three  hundred  and  twenty." 

"No,"  Warren  corrected  very  gravely.  "Three  hun- 
dred and  twenty  cards,  you  mean,  for  six  hundred  and 
forty  wives  and  husbands." 

"Some  of  them  are  bachelors,  my  dear,"  Edie  answered 
with  a  sagacious  nod;  "and  some  old  maids,  who  never 
by  any  chance  buy  anything.  As  far  as  art's  concerned, 
the  old  maid  may  be  regarded  as  a  mere  cipher.  But, 
for  argument's  sake,  since  you  want  to  argufy,  like  the 
parson  in  the  Black  Country,  we'll  say  six  hundred.  Now, 
what's  six  hundred  human  beings  in  a  house  like  this — a 
mansion — a  palace — a  perfect  Vatican — distributed  over 
nearly  four  hours,  and  equally  diffused  throughout  the 
entire  establishment?  Of  course,  my  dear,  you  at  once 
apply  the  doctrine  of  averages.  That's  scientific.  Each 
party  stops  not  longer  than  an  hour  at  the  very  outside. 
You  never  have  two  hundred  in  the  place  at  once.  And 
what's  two  hundred?  A  mere  trifle!  I  declare  it  affords 
no  scope  at  all  for  a  girl's  ingenuity.  Like  our  respected 
ancestor,  Warren  Hastings,  I  stand  aghast  at  my  own 
moderation. — I  really  wish,  mother,  now  I  come  to  think 
of  it,  we'd  sent  out  invitations  for  a  thousand." 

"Six  hundred's  quite  enough  for  me,  I'm  sure,"  Warren 
replied,  glancing  round  the  room  once  more  in  palpable 
doubt.  "How  do  you  mean  to  arrange  for  them,  Edie?" 

"Oh,  easy  enough.  Nothing  could  be  simpler.  I'll 
tell  you  how.  First  of  all,  you  throw  open  the  folding- 
doors — or  rather  to  save  the  room  at  the  sides,  you  lift 
them  bodily  off  their  hinges,  and  stick  them  out  of  the 
dining-room  window  into  the  back  garden." 

"They  won't  go  through,"  Warren  objected,  measuring 
with  his  eye. 

"Rubbish,  my  dear!  Won't  go  through,  indeed !  You 
men  have  no  imagination  and  no  invention.  You  manu- 
facture difficulties  out  of  pure  obstructiveness.  If  they 


294  THIS  MOHTAL  COIL. 

won't  go  through  whole,  why,  just  take  out  the  panels 
and  unglue  the  wood-work,  that's  all. — Very  well,  then; 
that  throws  the  drawing-room  and  dining-room  into  one 
good  big  reception-room,  from  which  of  course  we  re- 
move all  the  furniture.  Next,  we  range  the  chairs  in  a 
long  row  round  the  sides  for  the  old  ladies — the  old  ladies 
are  very  important;  keep  'em  downstairs,  or  else  they'll 
prevent  their  husbands  from  buying — and  let  the  men  and 
the  able-bodied  girls  stand  up  and  group  themselves  in 
picturesque  clusters  here  and  there  about  the  vacant  cen- 
ter. What  could  be  easier,  simpler,  or  more  effective?  A 
room  treated  so  furnishes  itself  automatically  with  human 
properties.  With  tact  and  care,  we  could  easily  squeeze 
in  some  seventy  or  eighty." 

"We  could,"  Warren  answered,  after  a  mental  calcula- 
tion of  square  area. — "But  how  about  the  pictures?" 

"Hear  him,  mother!  Oh,  but  men  are  helpless!  Where 
should  the  pictures  be  but  up  in  the  studio,  stupid!  We 
wouldn't  take  all  the  people  up  to  see  them  at  once,  of 
course.  You  and  I  would  go  around,  looking  very  affa- 
ble, with  a  professional  smile — so,  you  know — perpetually 
playing  about  the  corners  ofi  our  mouths,  and  carry  off  the 
men  with  the  most  purchasing  faces  in  constant  relays  up 
to  admire  the  immortal  masterpieces.  Meanwhile,  moth- 
er and  Mr.  Hatherley,  down  below  here,  would  do  the 
polite  to  the  old  ladies  and  undertake  the  deportment  busi- 
ness. Or  perhaps  Mr.  Hatherley'd  better  be  stationed  on 
guard  upstairs,  to  fire  off  some  of  his  gushing  critical  re- 
marks from  time  to  time  about  the  aerial  perspective  and 
the  middle  distances.  Mr.  Hatherley  always  knows  just 
what  to  say  to  weigh  down  the  balance  for  a  hesitating 
purchaser." 

"Edie,"  Warren  cried,  flinging  himself  down  with  a 
disgusted  face  upon  the  dining-room  sofa,  "I  hate  all  this 
horrid  advertising  and  touting,  for  all  the  world  as  if  one 
were  the  catchpenny  proprietor  of  a  patent  medicine,  in- 
stead of  an  honest  hard-working  British  artist!" 

"I  know  you  do,  my  dear  boy,"  Edie  answered  imper- 
turbably;  "and  that's  all  the  more  reason  why  those  who 
have  the  charge  of  you  should  undertake  to  push  you 
and  tout  for  you  against  your  will,  till  they  positively 


AN  ARTISTIC  EVENT.  295 

make  you  achieve  the  success  you  yourself  will  never  have 
the  meanness  to  try  for. — But,  thank  goodness,  I  don't 
mind  puffing.  I'm  intriguer  enough  myself  for  the  whole 
family.  If  it  hadn't  been  for  my  egging  you  on,  and 
pestering  you  and  bullying  you  and  keeping  you  up  to  it, 
we  should  never  have  got  up  this  private  view  of  your 
things  at  all. — And  now,  having  started  and  arranged  the 
entire  show,  I  mean  to  work  it  my  own  way  without  inter- 
ference. I'm  the  boss  who  runs  this  concern,  I  can  tell 
you,  Warren.  Decidedly,  Mr.  Hatherley  shall  stop  up- 
stairs, with  his  hair  down  his  back,  and  deliver  wild 
panegyrics  in  an  ecstatic  voice  on  the  aerial  perspective 
and  the  middle  distances. — I  shall  nudge  him  when  a 
probable  purchaser  comes  in,  to  make  him  turn  on  the 
aerial  perspective. — I  only  wish  with  all  my  heart  we  had 
dear  old  Elsie  over  here  to  help  us." 

"But  the  tea,  Edie?  How  about  the  tea,  dear?"  Mrs. 
Relf  interposed  with  a  doubtful  countenance. 

"And  you  too,  Brutus!"  her  daughter  cried,  looking 
down  on  her  with  a  despondent  shake  of  the  head,  which 
implied  a  profound  and  melancholy  shock  of  disappoint- 
ment. "I  thought,  mother,  I'd  brought  you  up  better 
than  that! — The  tea,  my  beloved,  will  be  duly  laid  out 
in  your  own  bedroom,  which  I  mean  to  transform,  for 
this  occasion  only,  with  entirely  new  scenery,  decorations, 
and  properties  throughout,  into  a  gorgeously  furnished 
oriental  lounge  and  enchanted  coffee  divan.  There,  Mar- 
tha, attired  as  a  Circassian  slave — or  at  least  in  her  best  bib 
and  tucker — shall  serve  out  ices,  sherbet,  and  spiced  dain- 
ties, every  one  from  silken  Samarcand  to  cedared  Leban- 
on. The  door  into  my  own  bedroom  will  also  be  open, 
and  in  that  spacious  apartment  we  shall  have  a  sort  of 
grand  supplementary  tea  and  refreshment  room,  where  the 
Jackson's  parlor-maid,  borrowed  for  the  occasion,  as  Cir- 
cassian number  two,  and  becomingly  endued  in  a  Liberty 
apron  and  a  small  red  cap  (price  ninepence),  shall  dis- 
pense claret-cup,  sponge-cake,  and  Hamburg  grapes  to 
the  deserving  persons  who  have  earned  their  restoratives 
by  the  encouragement  of  art  through  a  judicious  purchase. 
The  thing's  as  easy  as  ABC.  I've  not  the  least  doubt  it'll 


296  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

run  me  off  my  legs.  I  shall  perish  in  the  attempt — but  I 
shall  die  victorious." 

"In  your  own  bedroom,  dear!"  Mrs.  Relf  cried  aghast. 
"You'll  have  the  tea  in  your  own  bedroom!  But  where 
on  earth  shall  we  sleep,  Edie?" 

Edie  looked  down  at  her  once  more  with  a  solemn 
glance  of  high  disdain.  '"Sleep!"  she  cried.  "Did  you  say 
sleep,  mother?  The  craven  wretch  who  dreams  of  sleep- 
ing at  such  a  crisis  is  unworthy  of  being  Warren  Relf's 
progenitor. — Or  ought  it  to  be  progenitrix  in  the  femi- 
nine, I  wonder? — We  shall  sleep,  if  at  all,  my  dear  (which  I 
greatly  doubt),  -on  the  floor  in  the  box-room,  already  oc- 
cupied by  the  iron  legs  of  the  three  best  bedsteads. — But 
don't  be  afraid.  Leave  it  all  to  me,  darling.  Trust  your 
daughter;  and  your  daughter,  as  usual,  will  pull  you 
through.  If  there's  anything  on  earth  I  love,  it's  a  jolly 
good  muddle." 

And  jolly  as  the  muddle  undoubtedly  was,  Edie  Relf 
did  pull  them  through  in  the  end  with  triumphant  strat- 
egy. Saturday  the  3rd  was  a  brilliant  success.  Bletch- 
ingley  Road,  that  mere  suburban  byway,  had  never  before 
in  its  checkered  career  beheld  so  many  real  live  carriages 
together.  The  six  hundred,  or  at  least  a  very  fair  pro- 
portion of  them,  boldly  they  drove  and  well,  down  that 
narrow  side  street.  All  the  world  wondered.  The  neigh- 
bors looked  on  and  admired  with  vicarious  pride.  They 
felt  themselves  raised  in  the  social  scale  by  their  close 
proximity  to  so  fashionable  a  gathering.  Number  128 
itself  was  a  changed  character;  it  hardly  knew  its  own 
ground-plan.  In  the  drawing-room  and  dining-room, 
thrown  wide  into  one,  a  goodly  collection  of  artists  and 
picture-buyers  and  that  poor  residuum,  the  general  public, 
streamed  through  incessantly  in  a  constant  tide  on  its 
way  to  the  studio.  The  tea-room  (late  Mrs.  Relf's  bed- 
room) blazed  out  resplendent  in  borrowed  plumes — ori- 
ental rugs,  Japanese  fans,  and  hanging  parasols,  arranged 
a  la  Liberty.  Rout  seats  covered  with  eastern  stuffs  lined 
the  walls  and  passages.  The  studio,  in  particular,  proudly 
posed  as  a  work  of  art  of  truly  Whistleresque  magnifi- 
cence. Talk  about  tone!  The  "effect  was  unique.  War- 
ren Relf  himself,  who  for  three  nights  previously  had 


AN  ARTISTIC   EVENT.  297 

"had  a  bed  out"  at  the  lodgings  next  door,  and  swallowed 
down  a  hasty  chop  for  luncheon  at  the  Cheyne  Row  Club, 
had  superintended  in  person  the  hanging  of  the  wonderful 
sage-green  cretonne  and  the  pale  maize  silk  that  so  ad- 
mirably threw  up  the  dainty  colors  of  his  delicate  and  fan- 
tastic sea-pieces.  Elsewhere,  Edie  alone  had  reigned  su- 
preme. And  as  two  of  the  clock  chimed  from  Kensing- 
ton church  tower  on  that  eventful  afternoon,  she  mur- 
mured aside  to  her  mother,  with  an  enraptured  gaze  at 
the  scarlet  and  green  kakemonos  on  the  walls  of  the  stair- 
case: "My  dear,  there's  not  a  speck  of  dust  in  this  house, 
nor  a  bone  in  my  body  that  isn't  aching." 

When  the  hired  man  from  the  mews  behind  flung  open 
the  drawing-room  door  in  his  lordly  way  and  announced 
in  a  very  loud  voice,  "Mrs.  Bouverie  Barton  and  Mrs. 
Hugh  Massinger,"  neither  Warren  nor  Edie  was  in  the 
front  room  to  hear  the  startling  announcement,  which 
would  certainly  for  the  moment  have  taken  their  breath 
away.  For  communications  between  the  houses  of  Relf 
and  Massinger  had  long  since  ceased.  But  Warren  and 
Edie  were  both  upstairs.  So  Winifred  and  her  hostess 
passed  idly  in  (just  shaking  hands  by  the  doorway  with 
good  old  Mrs.  Relf,  who  never  by  any  chance  caught  any- 
body's name)  and  mingled  shortly  with  the  mass  of  the 
visitors.  Winifred  was  very  glad  indeed  of  that,  for  she 
wanted  to  escape  observation.  Sir  Anthony's  report  had 
been  far  from  reassuring.  She  preferred  to  remain  as 
much  in  the  background  as  possible  that  afternoon:  all 
she  wished  was  merely  to  observe  and  to  listen. 

As  she  stood  there  mingling  with  the  general  crowd  and 
talking  to  some  chance  acquaintance  of  old  London  days, 
she  happened  to  overhear  two  scraps  of  conversation 
going  on  behind  her.  The  first  was  one  that  mentioned 
no  names ;  and  yet,  by  some  strange  feminine  instinct,  she 
was  sure  it  was  of  herself  the  speakers  were  talking. 

"Oh,  yes,"  one  voice  said  in  a  low  tone,  with  the  inton- 
ation that  betrays  a  furtive  side-glance ;  "she's  far  from 
strong — in  fact,  very  delicate.  He  married  her  for  her 
money — of  course:  that's  clear.  She  hadn't  much  else, 
poor  little  thing,  except  a  certain  short-lived  ^  beaute  du 
diable,  to  recommend  her.  And  she  has  no  go  in  her;  she 


298  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

won't  live  long.  You  remember  what  Galton  remarks 
about  heiresses?  They're  generally  the  last  decadent 
members,  he  says,  of  a  moribund  stock  whose  strength 
is  failing.  They  bear  no  children,  or  if  any,  weaklings; 
most  of  them  break  down  with  their  first  infant;  and  they 
die  at  last  prematurely  of  organic  feebleness.  Why,  he 
just  sold  himself  outright  for  the  poor  girl's  property; 
that's  the  plain  English  of  it;  and  now,  I  hear,  with  his 
extravagant  habits,  he's  got  himself  after  all  into  monetary 
difficulties." 

"Agricultural  depression?"  the  second  voice  inquired — 
an  older  man's,  and  louder. 

"Worse  than  that,  I  fear;  agricultural  depression  and 
an  encroaching  sea.  Besides  which,  he  spends  too  freely. 
— But  execuse  me,  Dr.  Moutrie,"  in  a  very  low  tone:  "I'm 
afraid  the  lady's  rather  near  us." 

Winifred  strained  her  ears  to  the  utmost  to  hear  the 
rest;  but  the  voices  had  sunk  too  low  now  to  catch  a 
sound,  and  the  young  man  with  wrhom  she  was  supposed 
to  be  talking  had  evidently  got  tired  of  the  very  perfunc- 
tory Yeses  and  Noes  she  was  dealing  out  to  him  right  and 
left  at  irergular  intervals  with  charming  irrelevance.  She 
roused  herself,  and  endeavored  spasmodically  to  regain  the 
lost  thread  of  her  proper  conversation.  But  even  as  she 
did  so,  another  voice,  far  more  distinct,  from  a  lady  in 
front,  caught  her  attention  with  the  name  "Miss  Chal- 
loner."  Winifred  pricked  up  her  ears  incontinently. 
Could  it  be  of  her  Elsie  that  those  two  were  talking? 
Challoner's  not  such  a  very  uncommon  name,  to  be  sure ! 
And  yet — and  yet,  there  are  not  so  many  Miss  Challoners, 
either,  distributed  up  and  down  the  surface  of  Europe, 
as  to  make  the  coincidence  particularly  improbable.  Chal- 
loners are  not  so  plentiful  as  blackberries.  It  might  every 
bit  as  well  be  Elsie  as  any  other  Miss  Challoner  unattached. 
Winifred  strained  her  ears  once  more  to  catch  their  talk 
with  quickened  interest. 

"Oh  yes,"  the  second  lady  addressed  made  answer 
cheerfully;  "she  was  very  well  when  we  last  saw  her  in 
April  at  San  Remo.  We  had  the  next  villa  to  the  Relfs  on 
the  hillside,  you  know.  But  Miss  Challoner  doesn't  come  to 
England  now;  she  was  going  as  usual  to  St.  Martin 


AN  ARTISTIC  EVENT.  299 

Lantosque  to  spend  the  summer,  when  we  left  the  Riviera. 
She  always  goes  there  as  soon  as  the  San  Remo  season's 
over." 

''How  did  the  Relfs  first  come  to  pick  her  up?"  the 
other  speaker  asked  curiously. 

"Oh,  I  fancy  it  was  Mr.  Warren  Relf  himself  who  made 
her  acquaintance  somewhere  unearthly  down  in  Suffolk, 
where  she  used  to  be  a  governess.  He's  always  there,  I 
believe,  lying  on  a  mudbank,  yachting  and  sketching." 

Winifred  could  restrain  her  curiosity  no  longer.  "I 
beg  your  pardon,"  she  said,  leaning  forward  eagerly,  "but 
I  think  you  mentioned  a  certain  Miss  Challoner.  May  I 
ask,  does  it  happen  by  any  chance  to  be  Elsie  Challoner, 
who  was  once  at  Girton?  Because,  if  so,  she  was  a  gover- 
ness of  mine,  and  I  haven't  heard  of  her  for  a  long  time 
past.  Governesses  drop  out  of  one's  world  so  fast.  I 
should  be  glad  to  know  where  she's  living  at  present." 

The  lady  nodded.  "Her  name's  Elsie,"  she  said  with  a 
quiet  inclination,  "and  she  was  certainly  a  Girton  girl; 
but  I  hardly  think  she  can  be  the  same  you  mention.  I 
should  imagine,  indeed,  she's  a  good  deal  too  young  a 
girl  to  have  been  your  governess." 

It  was  innocently  said,  but  Winifred's  face  was  one 
vivid  flush  of  mingled  shame  and  humiliation.  Talk 
about  beaute  du  diable  indeed;  she  never  knew  before 
she  had  grown  so  very  plain  and  ancient.  "I'm  not  quite 
so  old  as  I  look,  perhaps,"  she  answered  hastily.  "I've 
had  a  great  deal  to  break  me  down.  But  I'm  glad  to 
learn  where  Elsie  is,  anyhow.  You  said  she  was  living 
at  San  Remo,  I  fancy?" 

"At  San  Remo.  Yes.  She  spends  her  winters  ^  there. 
For  the  summers,  she  always  goes  up  to  St.  Martin." 

"Thank  you,"  Winifred  answered  with  a  throbbing 
heart.  "I'm  glad  to  have  found  out  at  last  what's  become 
of  her. — Mrs.  Barton,  if  you  can  tear  yourself  away  from 
Dr.  and  Mrs.  Tyacke,  who  are  always  so  alluring,  suppose 
we  go  upstairs  now  and  look  at  the  pictures." 

In  the  studio,  Warren  Relf  recognized  her  at  once,  anc 
with  much  trepidation  came  up  to  speak  to  her.  it  would 
all  be  out  now,  he  greatly  feared;  and  Hugh  would  learn 
at  last  that  Elsie  was  living.  For  Winifred's  own  sake— 


306  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

she  looked  so  pale  and  ill — he  would  fain  have  kept  the 
secret  to  himself  a  few  months  longer.  v 

Winifred  held  out  her  hand  frankly.  She  liked  War- 
ren; she  had  always  liked  him;  and  besides,  Hugh  had 
forbidden  her  to  see  him.  Her  lips  trembled,  but  she 
was  bold,  and  spoke.  "Mr.  Relf,"  she  said  with  quiet  ear- 
nestness, "I'm  so  glad  to  meet  you  here  to-day  again — 
glad  on  more  than  one  account.  You  go  to  San  Remo 
often,  I  believe.  Can  you  tell  me  if  Elsie  Challoner  is 
living  there?" 

Warren  Relf  looked  back  at  her  in  undisguised 
astonishment.  "She  is,"  he  answered.  "Did  my  sister 
tell  you  so?" 

"No,"  Winifred  replied  with  bitter  truthfulness.  "I 
found  it  out."  And  with  that  one  short  incisive  sentence, 
she  moved  on  coldly,  as  if  she  would  fain  look  at  the 
pictures. 

"Does — does  Massinger  know  it?"  Warren  asked  all 
aghast,  taken  aback  by  surprise,  and  unwittingly  trampling 
on  her  tenderest  feelings. 

Winifred  turned  round  upon  him  with  an  angry  flash. 
This  was  more  than  she  could  bear.  The  tears  were  strug- 
gling hard  to  rise  to  her  eyes;  she  kept  them  back  with 
a  supreme  effort.  "How  should  I  know,  pray?"  she  an- 
swered fiercely,  but  very  low.  "Does  he  make  me  the 
confidante  of  all  his  loves,  do  you  suppose,  Mr.  Relf? — 
He  said  she  was  in  Australia. — He  told  me  a  lie. — Every- 
body's combined  and  caballed  to  deceive  me. — How 
should  I  know  whether  he  knows  or  not?  I  know  noth- 
ing. But  one  thing  I  know:  from  my  mouth  at  least 
he  shall  never,  never,  never  hear  it." 

She  turned  away,  stern  and  hard  as  iron.  Hugh  had 
deceived  her;  Elsie  had  deceived  her.  The  two  souls 
she  had  loved  the  best  on  earth!  From  that  moment 
forward,  the  joy  of  her  life,  whatever  had  been  left  of  it, 
was  all  gone  from  her.  She  went  forth  from  the  room  a 
crushed  creature. 

How  varied  in  light  and  shade  the  world  is!  While 
Winifred  was  driving  gloomily  back  to  her  own  lodgings 
— solitary  and  heart-broken,  in  Mrs.  Bouverie  Barton's 
comfortable  carriage — revolving  in  her  own  wounded  soul 


AN  ARTISTIC  EVENT.  301 

this  incredible  conspiracy  of  Hugh's  and  Elsie's — Edie 
Relf  and  her  mother  and  brother  were  joyfully  discussing 
their  great  triumph  in  the  now  dismantled  and  empty 
front  drawing-room  at  128  Bletchingley  Road,  South 
Kensington. 

"Have  you  totted  up  the  total  of  the  sales,  Warren?" 
Edie  Relf  inquired  with  a  bright  light  in  her  eye  and  a 
smile  on  her  lips;  for  the  private  view — her  own  incep- 
tion— had  been  more  than  successful  from  its  very  be- 
ginning. 

Warren  jotted  down  a  series  of  figures  on  the  back  of 
an  envelope  and  counted  them  up  mentally  with  profound 
trepidation.  "Mother,"  he  cried,  clasping  her  hand  with 
a  convulsive  clutch  in  his,  "I'm  afraid  to  tell  you;  it's  so 
positively  grand.  It  seems  really  too  much. — If  this 
goes  on,  you  need  never  take  any  pupils  again. — Edie, 
we  owe  it  all  to  you. — It  can't  be  right,  yet  it  comes  out 
square.  I've  reckoned  up  twice  and  got  each  time  the 
same  total — Four  Hundred  and  fifty!" 

"I  thought  so,"  Edie  answered  with  a  happy  little  laugh 
of  complete  triumph.  "I  hit  upon  such  a  capital  dodge, 
Warren.  I  never  told  you  beforehand  what  I  was  going 
to  do,  for  I  knew  if  I  did,  you'd  never  allow  me  to  put  it 
into  execution;  but  I  wrote  the  name  and  price  of  each 
picture  in  big  letters  and  plain  figures  on  the  back 
of  the  frame.  Then,  whenever  I  took  up  a  person 
with  a  good,  coiny,  solvent  expression  of  countenance, 
and  a  picture-buying  crease  about  the  corners  of  the 
mouth,  to  inspect  the  studio,  I  waited  for  them  casually 
to  ask  the  name  of  any  special  piece  they  particularly  ad- 
mired. 'Let  me  see,'  said  I.  'What  does  Warren  call 
that?  I  think  it's  on  the  back  here.'  So  I  turned  round 
the  frame,  and  there  they'd  see  it,  as  large  as  life:  'By 
Stormy  Seas — Ten  Pounds;'  or,  The  Haunt  of  the  Sea- 
Swallows — Thirty  Guineas.'  That  always  fetched  them, 
my  dear.  They  couldn't  resist  it.  It's  a  ticklish  thing  to 
inquire  about  prices.  People  don't  like  to  ask,  for  fear 
they  should  offend  you,  or  the  figure  should  happen  to  be 
too  stiff  for  their  purses ;  and  it  makes  them  feel  small  to 
inquire  the  price  and  find  it's  ten  times  as  much  as  they 
expected.  But  when  they  see  the  amount  written  down 


302  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

in  black  and  white  before  their  own  eyes,  at  our  astonish- 
ingly low  cash  quotations,  what  on  earth  can  they  do, 
being  human,  but  buy  them? — Warren,  you  may  give  me 
a  kiss,  if  you  like.  I'll  tell  you  what  I've  done :  I've  made 
your  fortune." 

Warren  kissed  her  affectionately  on  the  forehead,  half 
abashed.  'You're  a  bad  girl,  Edie,"  he  said  good-hu- 
moredly;  "and  if  I'd  only  known  it,  I'd  certainly  have 
taken  a  great  big  cake  of  best  ink-eraser  and  rubbed  your 
plain  figures  all  carefully  out  again. — But  I  don't  care 
a  pin  in  the  end,  after  all,  if  I  can  make  this  dear  mother 
and  you  comfortable." 

"And  marry  Elsie,"  Edie  put  in  mischievously. 

Warren  gave  a  quiet  sigh  of  regret.  "And  marry  El- 
sie," he  added  low.  "But  Elsie  will  never  marry  me." 

"You  goose!"  said  Edie,  and  laughed  at  him  to  his 
face.  She  knew  women  better  than  he  did. 

"That  dear  Mr.  Hatherley  managed  quite  half,"  she 
went  on  after  a  pause.  "If  you'd  only  heard  him  discussing 
textures,  or  listened  to  the  high-flown  nonsense  he  talked 
about  'delicate  touch,'  and  'crystaline  purity,'  and  'poetical 
undertones,'  and  'keen  insight  into  the  profoundest  re- 
cesses of  nature,'  you'd  have  blushed  to  learn  what  a  great 
painter  you  are,  Warren.  Why,  he  made  out  that  a  wave 
to  your  artistic  eyes  shone  like  opal  and  beryl  to  the  ig- 
noble vulgar.  He  remarked  that  liquid  sapphires  simply 
strewed  your  summer  seas,  and  mud  in  your  hands  became 
more  gorgeous  than  marble  to  the  common  understand- 
ing. The  dear  good  fellow!  That's  what  I  call  some- 
thing like  a  friend  for  you.  Your  artistic  eye,  indeed! 
I  could  have  just  thrown  my  arms  around  his  neck  and 
kissed  him!" 

"Edie!"  her  mother  exclaimed  reprovingly.  The  last 
generation  deprecates  such  open  expression  of  feminine 
approbation. 

"I  could,  mother,"  Edie  answered  with  a  bounce,  una- 
bashed. "And  what's  more,  I  should  have  awfully  liked 
to  do  it.  I  should  love  to  kiss  him ;  and  I  don't  care  two- 
pence who  hears  me  say  so. — Goodness  gracious,  I  do 
hope  that  isn't  Air.  Hatherley  out  on  the  staircase  there!" 

But  it  was  only  Martha  bringing  back  from  the  attics 


THE  STRANDS  DRAW  CLOSER.  303 

the  strictly  necessary  in  the  way  of  furniture  for  the  meal 
that  was  to  serve  them  in  lieu  of  dinner. 

And  all  this  while,  poor  lonely  Winifred  was  rocking 
herself  wildly  backward  and  forward  in  Mrs.  Bouverie 
Barton's  comfortable  carriage,  and  muttering  to  herself 
in  a  mad  fever  of  despair:  "I  could  have  believed  it  of 
Hugh;  but  of  Elsie,  of  Elsie — never,  never!" 

Elsie's  ring  gleamed  bright  on  her  finger — the  ring,  as 
she  thought,  that  Elsie  had  sent  her;  the  ring  that  Hugh 
had  really  enclosed  in  the  forged  letter.  Hateful,  treach- 
erous, cruel -souvenir!  At  Hyde  Park  Corner,  where  the 
crowd  of  carriages  and  riders  was  thickest,  she  tore  it  off 
and  flung  it  with  mad  energy  into  the  midst  of  the  road- 
way. The  horses  might  trample  it  under  foot  and  destroy 
it.  Elsie,  too — Elsie — Elsie  was  a  traitor!  She  flung  it 
from  her  like  some  poisonous  thing;  and  then  she  sank 
back  exhausted  on  the  cushions. 


'  CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

THE  STRANDS  DRAW  CLOSER. 

"I  feel  it  my  duty  to  let  you  know,"  Sir  Anthony  Wraxall 
wrote  to  Hugh  a  day  or  two  later — by  the  hand  of  his 
amanuensis — ''that  Mrs.  Massinger's  lungs  are  far  more 
seriously  and  dangerously  affected  than  I  deemed  it  at 
all  prudent  to  inform  her  in  person  last  week,  when  she 
consulted  me  here  on  the  subject.  Galloping  consumption, 
I  regret  to  say,  may  supervene  at  any  time.  The  phthisical 
tendency  manifests  itself  in  Mrs.  Massinger's  case  in  an 
advanced  stage;  and  general  tuberculosis  may  therefore 
on  the  shortest  notice  carry  her  off  with  startling  rapidity. 
I  would  advise  you,  under  these  painful  circumstances,  to 
give  her  the  benefit  of  a  warmer  winter  climate;  if  not 
Egypt  or  Algeria,  then  at  least  Mentone,  Catania,  or 
Malaga.  She  should  not  on  any  account  risk  seeing 
another  English  Christmas.  If  she  remains  in  Suffolk 


304  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

during  the  colder  months  of  the  present  year,  I  dare  not 
personally  answer  for  the  probable  consequences." 

Hugh  laid  down  the  letter  with  a  sigh  of  despair.  It 
was  the  last  straw,  and  it  broke  his  back  with  utter  de- 
spondency. How  to  finance  a  visit  to  the  south  he  knew 
not  Talk  about  Algeria,  Catania,  Malaga!  he  had  hard 
enough  work  to  make  both  ends  meet  anyhow  at  White- 
strand.  During  the  time  that  had  elapsed  since  Hather- 
ley's  visit,  his  dreams  had  fled,  his  acres  had  melted,  and 
his  exchequer  had  emptied  itself  with  unexampled  rapid- 
ity. The  Whitestrand  currency  was  already  very  much 
inflated  indeed:  half  of  it  consisted  frankly  of  unredeemed 
mortgage,  and  the  other  half  of  unconsolidated  floating 
debt  to  the  butcher  and  baker.  He  had  trusted  first  of  all 
to  the  breakwater  to  redeem  everything:  but  the  break- 
water, that  broken  reed,  had  only  pierced  the  hand  that 
leaned  upon  it.  The  sea  shifted  and  the  sand  drifted  worse 
than  ever.  Then  he  had  hoped  the  best  from  "A  Life's 
Philosophy;"  but  a  "A  Life's  Philosophy,"  published 
after  long  and  fruitless  negotiations,  at  his  own  risk — 
for  no  firm  would  so  much  as  touch  it  as  a  busines  specu- 
lation— had  never  paid  the  long  printer's  bill,  let  alone  re- 
couping him  for  his  lost  time  and  trouble.  Nobody  wanted 
to  read  about  his  life  or  his  philosophy.  Xo  epic  poem 
could  have  fallen  flatter.  It  went  as  dead  as  a  blank-verse 
tragedy,  waking  laughter  in  indolent  reviewers.  He  had 
in  his  desk  at  that  very  moment  the  first  statement  of 
accounts  for  the  futile  venture;  and  it  showed  a  balance 
on  the  debit  side  of  some  £54  7s.  nd.  There  was  a  fatal 
precision  that  was  simply  crushing  about  the  odd  item  of 
7s.  i id.  He  had  dreamed  of  thousands,  and  he  had  this 
to  pay !  Foiled — and  by  an  accountant !  the  melodramatist 
within  him  remarked  angrily.  Hugh  groaned  as  he 
thought  of  his  own  high  hopes,  and  their  utter  frustration 
by  a  numerical  deficit  of  so  base  a  sum  as  £54  75.  I  id.  He 
would  have  endured  the  round  hundred  with  far  greater 
complacency.  That  was  at  least  heroic.  But  75.  nd.! 
The  degredation  sank  deep  into  his  poet's  heart.  To  be 
balked  of  Parnassus  by  75.  ud.! 

Of  Winifred's  health,  Hugh  thought  far  less  than  of  the 
financial  difficulty.  He  saw  she  was  ill,  decid- 


THE  STRANDS  DRAW  CLOSER.  305 

edly  ill,  but  not  so  ill  as  everybody  else  who 
saw  her  imagined.  Wrapped  up  in  his  own  sel- 
fish hopes  and  fears,  never  really  fond  of  his  poor 
small  wife,  and  now  estranged  for  months  and  months 
by  her  untimely  discovery  of  Elsie's  watch,  which  both  he 
and  she  had  entirely  misinterpreted,  Hugh  Massinger 
had  seen  that  frail  young  creature  grow  thinner  and  paler 
day  by  day  without  at  any  time  realizing  the  profundity 
of  the  change  or  the  actual  seriousness  of  her  failing  condi- 
tion. Even  when  those  whom  we  devotedly  love  grow  ill 
by  degrees  before  our  very  eyes,  we  are  apt  long  to  over- 
look the  gradual  stages,  if  we  see  them  constantly  from  day 
to  day;  our  standard  varies  too  slowly  for  comparison: 
the  stranger  who  comes  at  long  intervals  finds  himself 
often  far  better  able  to  mark  and  report  upon  the  progress 
of  disease  than  those  who  watch  and  observe  the  patient 
most  anxiously.  But  with  Hugh,  complete  indifference 
helped  also  to  mask  the  insidious  effect  of  a  creeping  ill- 
ness; he  didn't  care  enough  about  Winifred's  health  to 
notice  whether  she  was  looking  really  feebler  or  otherwise. 
And  even  now,  when  Sir  Anthony  Wraxall  wrote  in  such 
plain  terms,  the  main  thought  in  his  own  mind  was  merely 
that  these  doctors  were  always  terrible  alarmists.  He 
would  take  Winifred  away  to  the  south,  of  course:  a 
doctor's  orders  must  be  obeyed  at  all  hazards.  So  much, 
conventional  morality  imposed  upon  him.  But  she  wasn't 
half  so  ill,  he  felt  certain,  as  Sir  Anthony  thought  her. 
Most  of  it  was  just  her  nasty  hysterical  temperament.  A 
winter  with  the  swallows  would  soon  bring  her  round. 
She'd  be  all  right  again  with  a  short  course  of  warmer 
weather. 

He  went  out  into  the  drawing-room  to  join  Winifred. 
He  found  her  lying  lazily  on  the  sofa,  pretending  to  read 
the  first  volume  of  Besant's  last  new  novel  from  Mudie's. 
"The  wind's  shifted,"  he  began  uneasily.  "We  shall  get 
it  warmer,  I  hope,  soon,  Winifred." 

"Yes,  the  wind's  shifted,"  Winifred  answered  gloomily, 
looking  up  in  a  hopeless  and  befogged  way  from  the  pages 
of  her  story.  "It  blew  straight  across  from  Siberia  yes- 
terday; to-day  it  blows  straight  across  from  Greenland. 
That's  all  the  change  we  ever  get,  it  seems  to  me,  in  the 


306  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

weather  in  England.  One  day  the  wind's  easterly  and  cold ; 
another  day  it's  westerly  and  damp.  Bronchitis  on  one 
side ;  rheumatism  on  the  other.  There's  the  whole  differ- 
ence." 

"How  would  you  like  to  go  abroad  for  the  winter,  I 
wonder?"  Hugh  asked  tentatively,  with  some  faint  attempt 
at  his  old  kindliness  of  tone  and  manner. 

His  wife  glanced  over  at  him  with  a  sudden  and  strange- 
ly suspicious  smile.  "To  San  Remo,  I  suppose?"  she 
answered  bitterly. 

She  meant  the  name  to  speak  volumes  to  Hugh's  con- 
science ;  but  it  fell  upon  his  ears  as  flat  and  unimpressive 
as  any  other.  "Not  necessarily  to  San  Remo,"  he  replied, 
all  unconscious.  "To  Algeria,  if  you  like — or  Mentone, 
or  Bordighera." 

Winifred  rose,  and  walked  without  one  word  of  expla- 
nation, but  with  a  resolute  air,  into  the  study,  next  door. 
When  she  came  out  again,  she  carried  in  her  two  arms 
Keith  Johnston's  big  Imperial  Atlas.  It  was  a  heavier 
book  than  she  could  easily  lift  in  her  present  feeble  condi- 
tion of  body,  but  Hugh  never  even  offered  to  help  her 
to  carry  it.  The  day  of  small  politenesses  and  courtesies 
was  long  gone  past.  He  only  looked  on  in  mute  surprise, 
anxious  to  know  whence  came  this  sudden  new-born  in- 
terest in  the  neglected  study  of  European  geography. 

Winifred  laid  the  atlas  down  with  a  flop  on  the  five 
o'clock  tea-table,  that  staggered  with  its  weight,  and 
turned  the  pages  with  feverish  haste  till  she  came  to  the 
map  of  Northern  Italy.  "I  thought  so,"  she  gasped  out, 
as  she  scanned  it  close,  a  lurid  red  spot  burning  bright  in 
her  cheek.  "Mentone  and  Bordighera  are  both  of  them 
almost  next  door  to  San  Remo. — The  nearest  stations  on 
the  line  along  the  coast. — You  could  run  over  there  often 
by  rail  from  either  of  them." 

"Run  over — often — by  rail — to  San  Remo?"  Hugh  re- 
peated with  a  genuine  puzzled  expression  of  countenance. 

"Oh,  you  act  admirably!"  Winifred  cried  with  a  sneer. 
"What  perfect  bewilderment!  What  childish  innocence! 
I've  always  considered  you  an  Irving  wasted  upon  private 
life.  If  you'd  gone  upon  the  stage,  you'd  have  made  your 
fortune;  which  you've  scarcely  succeeded  in  doing,  it 


THE  STRANDS  DRAW  CLOSER.  SOt 

must  be  confessed,  at  your  various  existing  assorted  pro- 
fessions." 

Hugh  stared  back  at  her  in  blank  amazement.  "I  don't 
know  what  you  mean,"  he  answered  shortly. 

"Capital!  capital!"  Winifred  went  on  in  her  bitter  mood, 
endeavoring  to  assume  a  playful  tone  of  unconcerned 
irony.  "I  never  saw  you  act  better  in  all  my  life — not 
even  when  you  were  pretending  to  fall  in  love  with  me. 
It's  your  most  successful  part — the  injured  innocent: — 
much  better  than  the  part  of  the  devoted  husband.  If  I 
were  you,  I  should  always  stick  to  it.  It  suits  your  fea- 
tures.— Well,  well,  we  may  as  well  go  to  San  Remo  itself, 
I  suppose,  as  anywhere  else  in  the  immediate  neighbor- 
hood. I'd  rather  be  on  the  spot  and  see  the  whole  play 
with  my  own  eyes,  than  guess  at  it  blindly  from  a  distance, 
at  Mentone  or  Bordighera.  You  may  do  your  Romeo 
before  an  admiring  audience.  San  Remo  it  shall  be,  since 
you've  set  your  heart  upon  it. — But  it's  very  abrupt,  this 
sudden  conversion  of  yours  to  the  charms  of  the  Riviera." 

"Winifred,"  Hugh  cried  with  transparent  conviction  in 
every  note  of  his  voice,  "I  see  you're  laboring  under  some 
distressing  misapprehension;  but  I  give  you  my  solemn 
word  of  honor  I  don't  in  the  least  know  what  it  is  you're 
driving  at.  You're  talking  about  somebody  or  something 
unknown  that  I  don't  understand.  I  wish  you'd  explain. 
I  can't  follow  you." 

But  he  had  acted  too  often  and  too  successfully  to  be 
believed  now  for  all  his  earnestness.  "Your  solemn  word 
of  honor!"  Winifred  burst  out  angrily,  with  intense  con- 
tempt. "Your  solemn  word  of  honor,  indeed!  And  pray, 
who  do  you  think  believes  now  in  your  precious  word  or 
your  honor  either? — You  can't  deceive  me  any  longer, 
thank  goodness,  Hugh.  I  know  you  want  to  go  to  San 
Remo ;  and  I  know  for  whose  sake  you  want  to  go  there. 
This  solicitude  for  my  health's  all  a  pure  fiction.  Little 
you  cared  for  my  health  a  month  ago!  Oh  no,  I  see 
through  it  all  distinctly.  You've  found  out  there's  a  reason 
for  going  to  San  Remo,  and  you  want  to  go  for  your 
own  pleasure  accordingly." 

"I  don't  want  to  go  to  San  Remo  at  all,"  Hugh  cried, 
getting  angry.  "I  never  said  a  word  myself  about  San 


3<£  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

Remo;  I  never  proposed  or  thought  of  San  Remo.  It 
was  you  yourself  who  first  suggested  the  very  name.  I've 
nothing  to  do  with  it;  and  what's  more,  I  won't  go  there." 

"Oh  yes,  I  know,"  Winifred  answered  provokingly, 
with  another  of  her  frequent  sharp  fits  of  coughing.  "You 
didn't  mention  it.  Of  course  I  noticed  that.  You're  a 
great  deal  too  sharp  to  commit  yourself  so.  You  carefully 
avoided  naming  San  Remo,  for  fear  you  should  happen 
to  rouse  my  intuitive  suspicions.  You  proposed  we  should 
go  to  Mentone  or  Bordighera  instead,  where  you  could 
easily  run  across  whenever  you  liked  to  your  dear  San 
Remo,  and  where  I  should  be  perhaps  a  little  less  likely 
to  find  out  the  reason  you  wanted  to  go  there  for. — But 
I  see  through  your  plans.  I  checkmate  your  designs. 
I  won't  give  in  to  them.  Whatever  comes,  you  may  count 
at  least  upon  finding  me  always  ready  to  thwart  you.  I 
shall  go  to  San  Remo,  if  I  go  away  at  all,  and  to  nowhere 
else  on  the  whole  Riviera.  I  prefer  to  face  the  worst  at 
once,  thank  you.  I  shall  know  everything,  if  there's  any- 
thing to  know.  And  I  won't  be  shuffled  off  upon  your 
Mentone  or  your  Bordighera,  while  you're  rehearsing 
your  balcony  scenes  at  San  Remo  alone ;  so  that's  flat  for 
you." 

An  idea  flashed  sudden  across  Hugh's  mind.  "I  think, 
Winifred,"  he  said  calmly,  "you're  laboring  under  a  mis- 
take about  the  place  you're  speaking  of.  The  gaming 
tables  are  not  at  San  Remo,  as  you  suppose,  but  at  Monte 
Carlo,  just  beyond  Mentone.  And  if  you  thought  I 
wanted  to  go  to  the  Riviera  for  the  sake  of  repairing  our 
ruined  estate  at  Monte  Carlo,  you're  very  much  mistaken. 
I  wanted  to  go,  I  solemnly  declare,  for  your  health  only." 

Winifred  rose,  and  faced  him  now  like  an  angry  tigress. 
Her  sunken  white  cheeks  were  flushed  and  fiery  indeed 
with  suppressed  wrath,  and  a  bright  light  blazed  in  her 
dilated  pupils.  The  full  force  of  a  burning  indignation 
possessed  her  soul.  "Hugh  Massinger,"  she  said,  repelling 
him  haughtily  with  her  thin  left  hand,  "you've  lied  to  me 
for  years,  and  you're  lying  to  me  now  as  you've  always  lied 
to  me.  You  know  you've  lied  to  me,  and  you  know  you're 
lying  to  me.  This  pretense  about  my  health's  a  trans- 
parent falsehood.  These  prevarications  about  the  gamb- 


THE  STRANDS  DRAW  CLOSER.  309 

ling  tables  are  a  tissue  of  fictions.  You  can't  deceive  me. 
I  know  why  you  want  to  go  to  San  Remo!"  And  she 
pushed  him  away  in  disgust  with  her  angry  fingers. 

The  action  and  the  insult  were  too  much  for  Hugh.  He 
could  no  longer  restrain  himself.  Sir  Anthony's  letter 
trembled  in  his  hands;  he  was  clutching  it  tight  in  his 
waistcoat  pocket.  To  show  it  to  Winifred  would  have 
been  cruel,  perhaps,  under  any  other  circumstances;  but 
in  face  of  such  an  accusation  as  that,  yet  wholly  misunder- 
stood, flesh  and  blood — at  least  Hugh  Massinger's — could 
not  further  resist  the  temptation  of  producing  it.  "Read 
that,"  he  cried,  handing  her  over  the  letter  coldly ;  "you'll 
see  from  it  why  it  is  I  want  to  go;  why,  in  spite  of  all 
we've  lost  and  are  losing,  I'm  still  prepared  to  submit  to 
this  extra  expenditure." 

"Out  of  my  money,"  Winifred  answered  scornfully,  as 
she  took  the  paper  with  an  inclination  of  mock-courtesy 
from  his  tremulous  hands.  "How  very  generous!  And 
how  very  kind  of  you!" 

She  read  the  letter  through  without  a  single  word ;  then 
she  yielded  at  last,  in  spite  of  herself,  to  her  womanly 
tears.  "I  see  it  all,  Hugh,"  she  cried,  flinging  herself 
down  once  more  in  despair  upon  the  sofa.  "You  fancy 
I'm  going  to  die  now;  and  it  will  be  so  convenient,  so 
very  convenient  for  you,  to  be  near  her  there,  next  door 
at  San  Remo!" 

Hugh  gazed  at  her  again  in  mute  surprise.  At  last  he 
saw  it — he  saw  it  in  all  its  naked  hideousness.  A  light 
began  gradually  to  dawn  upon  his  mind.  It  was  awful — 
it  was  horrible  in  its  cruel  Nemesis  upon  his  unspoken 
crime.  To  think  she  should  be  jealous — of  his  murdered 
Elsie !  He  could  hardly  speak  of  it ;  but  he  must,  he  must. 
"Winnie,"  he  cried,  almost  softened  by  his  pity  for  what  he 
took  to  be  her  deadly  and  terrible  mistake,  "I  understand 
you,  I  think,  after  all.  I  know  what  you  mean. — You 
believe — that  Elsie — is  at  San  Remo." 

Winifred  looked  up  at  him  through  her  tears  with  a  with- 
ering glance.  "You  have  said  it!"  she  cried  in  a  haughty 
voice,  and  relapsed  into  a  silent  fit  of  sobbing  and  sup- 
pressed cough,  with  her  poor  wan  face  buried  deep  once 
more  like  a  wounded  child's  in  the  cushions  of  the  sofa. 


310  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

What  would  Hugh  not  have  given  if  only  he  could  have 
explained  to  her  there  that  moment  that  Elsie  was  lying 
dead,  for  three  years  past  and  more,  in  her  nameless  grave 
at  Orfordness!  But  he  could  not.  He  dared  not.  His 
own  past  lies  rose  up  in  judgment  at  last  against  him. 
He  bowed  his  head,  unable  even  to  weep.  Jealous  of 
Elsie!  of  poor  dead  Elsie!  That  was  what  she  meant, 
then,  by  the  talk  about  his  balcony  scene!  But  Elsie 
would  never  play  Juliet  to  his  Romeo  again.  Elsie  was 
dead,  and  Winifred,  alas,  would  never  now  believe  it. 
Truly,  his  punishment  was  greater  than  he  could  bear. 
He  bowed  his  head  in  silent  shame.  The  penalty  of  his 
sin  was  bitter  upon  him. 

One  only  way  now  lay  open  before  him.  He  would  take 
her  to  San  Remo,  and  let  her  see  for  herself  how  utterly 
groundless,  and  futile,  and  unjust  were  her  base  suspi- 
cions. He  would  show  her  that  Elsie  was  not  at  San 
Remo. 


CHAPTER  XXXV. 

RETRIBUTION. 

Oh  the  horror  and  drudgery  of  those  next  few  weeks, 
while  Hugh,  in  a  fever  of  shame  and  disgust,  was  anx- 
iously and  wearily  making  difficult  arrangements,  financial 
or  otherwise,' for  that  hopeless  flitting  to  the  sunny  South, 
that  loomed  ahead  so  full  of  gloom  and  wretchedness  for 
himself  and  Winifred !  The  speechless  agony  of  running 
about,  with  a  smile  on  his  lips  and  that  nameless  weight 
on  his  crushed  heart,  driving  horrid,  sordid,  cheese-paring 
bargains  with  the  family  attorney  and  the  London  money- 
lenders for  still  further  advances  on  those  squalid  worthless 
pieces  of  stamped  paper!  The  ignominious  discussions  of 
percentage  and  discount,  the  undignified  surrender  of  doc- 
uments and  title-deeds,  the  disgusting  counter-checks  and 
collateral  securities,  the  insulting  whispers  of  doubt  and 


RETRIBUTION.  311 

uncertainty  as  to  his  own  final  financial  solvency!'  All 
these  indignities  would  in  themselves  have  been  quite 
excruciating  enough  to  torture  a  proud  man  of  Hugh 
Massinger's  haughty  and  sensitive  temperament.  But  to 
suffer  al-1  these,  with  the  superadded  wretchedness  of  Wini- 
fred's growing  illness  and  Winifred's  gathering  cloud  of 
suspicion  about  his  own  conduct,  was  simply  unendurable. 
Above  all,  to  know  in  his  own  soul  that  Winifred  was 
jealous  of  poor  dead  Elsie!  If  only  he  could  have  made  a 
clean  breast  of  it  all!  If  only  he  could  have  said  to  her  in 
one  single  outburst,  "Elsie  is  dead!"  it  might  perhaps 
have  been  easier.  But  after  all  his  own  clever  machina- 
tions and  deceptions,  after  all  his  long  course  of  con- 
firmatory circumstantial  evidence — the  letters,  the  ring, 
the  messages,  the  details — how  on  earth  could  Winifred 
ever  believe  him?  His  cunning  recoiled  with  fatal  pre- 
cision upon  his  own  head.  The  bolt  he  had  shot  turned 
back  \ipon  his  breast.  The  pit  that  he  digged  he  himself 
had  fallen  therein. 

So  there  was  nothing  for  it  left  now  but  to  face  the  un- 
speakable, to  endure  the  unendurable.  He  must  go 
through  with  it  all,  let  it  cost  what  it  might.  For  at  least 
in  the  end  he  had  one  comfort.  At  San  Remo,  Winifred 
would  find  out  she  was  mistaken;  there  was  no  Elsie  at 
all,  there  or  elsewhere. 

What  had  led  her  astray  into  this  serious  and  singular 
error,  he  wondered.  That  problem  exercised  his  weary 
mind  not  a  little  in  the  night-watches.  Morning  after 
morning,  as  the  small  hours  clanged  solemnly  from  the 
Whitestrand  church  tower,  Hugh  lay  awake  and  turned 
it  over  in  anxious  debate  with  his  own  wild  thoughts. 
Could  somebody  have  told  her  they  had  met  some  Miss 
Challoner  or  other  accidentally  at  San  Remo?  Could 
Warren  Relf,  vile  wretch  that  he  was,  industriously  have 
circulated  some  baseless  rumor  as  to  Elsie's  whereabouts 
on  purpose  to  entrap  him?  Or  could  Winifred  herself 
intuitively  have  arrived  at  her  own  idea,  woman-like,  by 
some  false  interference — some  stupid  mistake  as  to  post- 
mark or  envelope  or  name  or  handwriting?  It  was  all 
an  insoluble  mystery  to  him;  and  Winifred  would  do 
nothing  toward  clearing  it  up.  Whenever  he  tried  by 


312  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

devious  routes  to  approach  the  subject  from  a  fresh  side, 
Winifred  turned  round  upon  him  at  once  with  fierce  indig- 
nation in  her  pale  blue  eyes  and  answered  always :  "You 
know  it  all.  Don't  try  to  deceive  me.  It's  no  good  any 
longer.  I  see  through  you  at  last.  Why  go  on  lying  to 
me?" 

The  more  he  protested  the  more  scornful  and  caustic 
Winifred  grew.  The  more  genuinely  and  sincerely  he 
declared  his  bewilderment,  the  more  convinced  she  felt  in 
her  own  mind  that  he  acted  a  part  with  marvelous  skill 
and  with  consummate  heartlessness. 

It  was  terrible  not  to  be  trusted  when  he  told  the  plain 
truth;  but  it  was  his  own  fault.  He  could  not  deny  it. 
And  that  it  was  his  own  fault  made  it  all  the  bitterer  for 
him.  He  hadn't  even  the  solace  of  a  righteous  indigna- 
tion to  comfort  his  soul  in  the  last  depth  of  contumely. 

When  you  know  that  troubles  come  undeserved,  you 
have  the  easy  resource  of  conscious  rectitude  at  any  rate 
to  support  you.  The  just  man  in  adversity  is  least  to  be 
pitied.  It  is  the  sinner  who  feels  the  whip  smart.  Hugh 
had  to  swallow  it  all  manfully,  and  to  eat  humble-pie  at 
his  private  table  into  the  bargain.  It  was  his  own  fault; 
he  had  unhappily  no  one  but  himself  to  blame  for  it. 

Meanwhile  Winifred  grew  rapidly  worse,  so  ill,  that 
even  Hugh  began  to  perceive  it,  and  despaired  of  being 
able  to  carry  her  in  safety  to  San  Remo.  The  shock  at  the 
Relfs'  had  told  seriously  upon  her  weak  and  shattered 
constitution:  the  constant  friction  of  her  relations  with 
Hugh  continued  to  tell  upon  it  every  day  that  passed  over 
her.  The  motherless  girl  and  childless  mother  brooded 
in  secret  over  her  great  grief;  she  had  no  one,  absolutely 
no  one  on  earth  who  could  sympathize  with  her  in  her 
terrible  trouble.  She  longed  to  fling  herself  upon  Elsie's 
bosom — the  dear  old  Elsie  that  had  once  been,  the  Elsie 
that  perhaps  could  still  understand  her — and  to  cry  aloud 
to  her  for  pity,  for  sympathy.  When  she  got  to  San 
Remo,  she  sometimes  thought,  she  would  tell  all — every 
word — to  Elsie;  and  Elsie  at  least  must  be  very  much 
changed  if  in  spite  of  all  she  could  not  feel  for  her. 

Proud  as  she  was,  she  would  throw  herself  on  Elsie's 
mercy.  Elsie  had  wronged  her,  and  she  would  tell  all  to 


RETRIBUTION.  813 

Elsie.    But  not  to  Hugh.    Hugh  was  hard  and  cold  and 
unyielding  as  steel.    It  would  not  be  for  long.    She  would 

soon  be  released.    And  then  Hugh She  shrank  from 

thinking  it. 

Money  was  cheap,  the  lawyers  said ;  but  Hugh  found  he 
had  to  pay  dear  for  it.  Money  was  plentiful,  the  news- 
papers reported ;  but  Hugh  found  it  as  scarce  as  charity. 
He  took  a  long  time  to  conclude  his  arrangements;  and 
when  he  concluded  them,  the  terms  were  ruinous.  Never 
mind;  Winifred  wouldn't  last  long;  he  had  only  himself 
to  think  about  in  future. 

At  last  the  day  came  for  their  journey  South.  They 
were  going  alone,  without  even  a  maid ;  glad  to  have  paid 
the  servants  their  arrears  and  escape  alive  from  the  clutches 
of  the  butchers  and  bakers.  November  fogs  shrouded 
the  world.  Hugh  had  completed  those  vile  transactions 
of  his  with  the  attorneys  and  the  money-lenders,  and  felt 
faintly  cheered  by  the  actual  metallic  chink  of  gold  for 
the  journey  rattling  and  jingling  in  his  trousers'  pocket. 
But  Winifred  sat  very  weak  and  ill  in  the  far  corner  of  the 
first-class  carriage  that  bore  them  away  from  Charing 
Cross  Station.  They  had  come  up  the  day  before  from 
Almundham  to  town,  and  spent  the  night  luxuriously  in 
the  rooms  of  the  Metropole.  You  must  make  a  dying 
woman  comfortable.  And  Hugh  had  dropped  round  with 
defiant  pride  into  the  Cheyne  Row  Club,  assuming  in 
vain  the  old  jaunty  languid  poetical  air — "of  the  days 
before  he  had  degenerated  into  landowning,"  Hatherley 
said  afterward — just  to  let  recalcitrant  Bohemia  see  for 
itself  it  hadn't  entirely  crushed  him  by  its  jingling  jibes 
and  its  scathing  critics  of  "A  Life's  Philosophy."  But 
the  protest  fell  flat;  it  was  indeed  a  feeble  one:  heedless 
Bohemia,  engrossed  after  its  wont  with  its  last  new  favor- 
ite, the  rising  author  of  "Lays  of  the  African  Lakeland," 
held  out  to  Hugh  Massinger  of  Whitestrand  Hall  its 
flabbiest  right  hand  of  lukewarm  welcome.  And  this  was 
the  Bohemia  that  once  had  grasped  his  landless  fingers 
with  fraternal  fervor  of  sympathetic  devotion !  The  chilli- 
ness of  his  reception  in  the  scene  of  his  ancient  popularity 
stung  the  Bard  to  the  quick.  No  more  for  him  the  tabor, 


314  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

the  cymbals,  and  the  oaten  pipe;  no  more  the  blushful 
Cheyne  Row  Hippocrene.  He  felt  himself  demode.  The 
rapid  stream  of  London  society  and  London  thought  had 
swept  eddying-  past  and  left  him  stranded.  As  the  train 
rolled  on  upon  its  way  to  Dover,  Hugh  Massfnger  of 
Whitestrand  Hall — and  its  adjacent  sandhills — leaned  back 
disconsolate  upon  the  padded  cushions  of  his  leather- 
lined  carriage  and  thought  with  a  sigh  to  himself  of  the 
days  without  name,  without  number,  when,  proud  as  a 
lord,  he  had  traveled  third  in  a  bare  pen  on  the  honest 
earnings  of  his  own  right  hand,  and  had  heard  of  mort- 
gages, in  some  dim  remote  impersonal  way,  only  as  a 
foolish  and  expensive  aristocratic  indulgence.  A  mort- 
gage was  nowadays  a  too  palpable  reality,  with  the  glamor 
of  romance  well  worn  off  it.  He  wished  its  too,  too  solid 
sheepskin  would  melt,  and  reduce  him  once  more  to 
wooden  seats  and  happiness.  Oh,  for  some  enchanted 
carpet  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  to  transport  him  back  with 
a  bound  from  his  present  self  to  those  good  old  days  of 
Thirds  and  Elsie! 

But  enchanted  carpets  are  now  unhappily  out  of  date, 
and  Channel  steamers  have  quite  superseded  the  magical 
shallops  of  good  Haroun-al-Raschid.  In  plain  prose,  the 
Straits  were  rough,  and  Winifred  suffered  severely  from 
the  tossing.  At  Calais,  they  took  the  through  train  for 
Marseilles,  having  secured  a  coupe-lit  at  Charing  Cross 
beforehand. 

That  was  a  terrible  night,  that  night  spent  in  the  coupe- 
lit  with  Winifred:  the  most  terrible  Hugh  had  ever  en- 
dured since  the  memorable  evening  when  Elsie  drowned 
herself. 

They  had  passed  round  Paris  at  gray  dusk,  in  their 
comfortable  through-carriage,  by  the  Chemin  de  Per  de 
Ceinture  to  the  Gare  de  Lyon,  and  were  whirling  along  on 
their  way  to  Fontainebleau  through  the  shades  of  evening, 
when  Winifred  first  broke  the  ominous  silence  she  had 
preserved  ever  since  they  stopped  at  St.  Denis.  "It  won't 
be  for  long  now,"  she  said  dryly,  "and  it  will  be  so  con- 
venient for  you  to  be  at  San  Remo." 

Hugh's  heart  sank  once  more  within  him.  It  was  quite 
clear  that  Winifred  thought  Elsie  was  there.  He  wished 


RETRIBUTION.  315 

to  heaven  she  was,  and  that  he  was  no  murderer.  Oh,  the 
weight  that  would  have  been  lifted  off  his  weary  soul  if 
only  he  could  think  it  so!  The  three  years'  misery  that 
would  rise  like  a  mist  from  his  uncertain  path,  if  only  he  did 
not  know  to  a  certainty  that  Elsie  lay  buried  at  Orfordness 
in  the  shipwrecked  sailors'  graveyard  by  the  Low  Light- 
house. He  looked  across  at  Winifred  as  she  sat  in  her 
place.  She  was  pale  and  frail ;  her  wasted  cheeks  showed 
white  and  hollow.  As  she  leaned  back  there,  with  a  cold 
light  gleaming  hard  and  chilly  from  her  sunken  blue  eyes 
— those  light  blue  eyes  that  he  had  never  loved — those 
cruel  blue  eyes  that  he  had  learned  at  last  to  avoid  with  an 
instinctive  shrinking,  as  they  gazed  through  and  through 
him  with  their  flabby  persistence — he  said  to  himself  with 
a  sigh  of  relief:  "She  can't  last  long.  Better  tell  her  all, 
and  let  her  know  the  truth.  It  could  do  no  harm.  She 
might  die  the  happier.  Dare  I  risk  it,  I  wonder?  Or  is 
it  too  dangerous?" 

"Well?"  Winifred  asked  in  an  icy  tone,  interpreting 
aright  a  little  click  in  his  throat  and  the  doubtful  gleam 
in  his  shifty  eyes  as  implying  some  hesitating  desire  to 
speak  to  her.  "What  are  you  going  to  tell  me  next?  Speak 
it  out  boldly!  don't  be  afraid.  It's  no  novelty.  You  know 
I'm  not  easily  disconcerted." 

He  looked  back  at  her  nervously  with  bent  brows.  That 
fragile  small  creature !  He  positively  feared  her.  Dare  he 
tell  her  the  truth?  And  would  she  believe  it?  Those  blue 
eyes  were  so  coldly  glassy.  Yet,  with  a  sudden  impulse, 
he  resolved  to  be  frank;  he  resolved  to  unburden  his 
guilty  soul  of  all  its  weight  of  care  to  Winifred. 

"No  lie,  Winifred,  but  the  solemn  truth,"  he  blurted  out 
slowly,  in  a  voice  that  of  itself  might  have  well  produced 
complete  conviction — on  any  one  less  incredulous  than 
the  wife  he  had  cajoled  and  deceived  so  often.  "You 
think  Elsie's  at  San  Remo,  I  know.— You're  wrong  there; 
you're  quite  mistaken. — She's  not  in  San  Remo,  nor  in 
Australia  either.  That  was  a  lie. — Elsie's  dead — dead 
three  years  ago — before  we  were  married. — Dead  and 
buried  at  Orfordness.  And  I've  seen  her  grave,  and  cried 
over  it  like  a  child,  too." 

He  spoke  with  solemn  intensity  of  earnestness;  but  he 


316  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

spoke  in  vain.  Winifred  thought,  herself,  till  that  very 
moment,  she  had  long  since  reached  the  lowest  possible 
depth  of  contempt  and  scorn  for  the  husband  on  whom 
she  had  thrown  herself  away;  but  as  he  met  her  then 
with  that  incredible  falsehood — as  she  must  needs  think 
it — on  his  lying  lips,  with  so  grave  a  face  and  so  profound 
an  air  of  frank  confession,  her  lofty  disdain  rose  at  once 
to  a  yet  sublimer  height  of  disgust  and  loathing  of  which 
till  that  night  she  could  never  even  have  conceived  herself 
capable.  "You  hateful  Thing!"  she  cried,  rising  from  her 
seat  to  the  center  of  the  carriage,  and  looking  down  upon 
him  physically  from  her  point  of  vantage  as  he  cowered 
and  slank  like  a  cur  in  his  corner.  ''Don't  dare  to  address 
me  again,  I  say,  with  lies  like  that.  If  you  can't  find  one 
word  of  truth  to  tell  me,  have  the  goodness  at  least,  since 
I  don't  desire  your  further  conversation,  to  leave  we  the 
repose  of  your  polite  silence." 

"But  Winifred,"  Hugh  cried,  clasping  his  hands  to- 
gether in  impotent  despair,  "this  is  the  truth,  the  very,  very 
truth,  the  whole  truth,  that  I'm  now  telling  you.  I've 
hidden  it  from  you  so  long  by  deceit  and  treachery.  I 
acknowledge  all  that:  I  admit  I  deceived  you.  But  I 
want  to  tell  you  the  whole  truth  now;  and  you  won't 
listen  to  me!  Oh,  heaven,  Winifred,  you  won't  listen  to 
me!" 

On  any  one  else,  his  agonized  voice  and  pleading  face 
would  have  produced  their  just  and  due  effect;  but  on 
Winifred — impossible.  She  knew  he  was  lying  to  her 
even  when  he  spoke  the  truth ;  and  the  very  intensity  and 
fervor  of  his  horror  only  added  to  her  sense  of  utter  repul- 
sion from  his  ingrained  falseness  and  his  native  duplicity. 
To  pretend  to  her  face,  with  agonies  of  mock  remorse,  that 
Elsie  was  dead,  when  she  knew  he  was  going  to  San  Remo 
to  see  her!  And  taking  his  own  wedded  wife  to  die  there ! 
The  man  who  could  act  so  realistically  as  that,  and  tell  lies 
so  glibly  at  such  a  moment,  must  be  falser  to  the  core 
than  her  heart  had  ever  dreamed  or  conceived  of. 

"Go  on,"  she  murmured,  relapsing  into  her  corner. 
"Continue  your  monologue.  It's  supreme  in  ks  way — 
no  actor  could  beat  it.  But  be  so  good  as  to  consider  my 
part  in  the  piece  left  out  altogether.  I  shall  answer  you 


RETRIBUTION.  SLT 

no  more.  I  should  be  sorry  to  interrupt  so  finished  an 
artist!" 

Her  scathing  contempt  wrought  up  in  Hugh  a  perfect 
fury  of  helpless  indignation.  That  he  should  wish  to  con- 
fess, to  humble  himself  before  her,  to  make  reparation! 
and  that  Winifred  should  spurn  his  best  attempt,  should 
refuse  so  much  as  to  listen  to  his  avowal!  It  was  too  igno- 
minious. "For  heaven's  sake,"  he  cried,  with  his  hands 
clasped  hard,  "at  least  let  me  speak.  Let  me  have  my  say 
out.  You're  all  wrong.  You're  wronging  me  utterly.  I've 
behaved  most  wickedly,  most  cruelly,  I  know:  I  confess 
it  all.  I  abase  myself  at  your  feet.  If  you  want  me  to  be 
abject,  I'll  grovel  before  you!  I  admit  my  crime,  my  sin, 
my  transgression. — I  won't  pretend  to  justify  myself  at 
all. — I've  lied  to  you,  forged  to  you,  deceived  you,  misled 
you!"  (At  each  clause  and  phrase  of  passionate  self-con- 
demnation, Winifred  nodded  a  separate  sardonic 
acquiescence.)  "But  you're  wrong  about  this.  You  mis- 
take me  wholly. — I  swear  to  you,  my  child,  Elsie's  not 
alive.  You're  jealous  of  a  woman  who's  been  dead  for 
years.  For  my  sin  and  shame  I  say  it,  she's  dead  long 
ago!" 

He  might  as  well  have  tried  to  convince  the  door-handle. 
Winifred's  loathing  found  no  overt  vent  in  angry  words; 
she  repressed  her  speech,  her  very  breath  almost,  with  a 
spasmodic  effort.  But  she  stretched  out  both  her  hands,  the 
palms  turned  outward,  with  a  gesture  of  horror,  contempt, 
and  repulsion;  and  she  averted  her  face  with  a  little  cry 
of  supreme  disgust,  checked  down  deep  in  her  rising 
throat,  as  one  averts  one's  face  instinctively  from  a  loath- 
some sore  or  a  venomous  reptile.  Such  hideous  duplicity 
to  a  dying  woman  was  more  than  she  could  brook  with- 
out some  outer  expression  of  her  outraged  sense  of  social 
decency. 

But  Hugh  could  no  longer  restrain  himself  now;  he 
had  begun  his  tale,  and  he  must  run  right  through  with 
it.  The  fever  of  the  confessional  had  seized  upon  his  soul ; 
remorse  and  despair  were  goading  him  on.  He  must  have 
relief  for  his  pent-up  feelings.  Three  years  of  silence 
were  more  than  enough.  Winifred's  very  incredulity  com- 
pelled him  to  continue.  He  must  tell  her  all — all,  all, 


318  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

utterly.    He  must  make  her  understand  to  the  uttermost 
jot,  willy,  nilly,  that  he  was  not  deceiving  her! 

He  opened  the  floodgates  of  his  speech  at  once,  and 
flowed  on  in  a  headlong  torrent  of  confession.  Winifred 
sat  there,  cowering  and  crouching  as  far  from  him  as 
possible  in  the  opposite  corner,  drinking  in  his  strange 
tale  with  an  evident  interest  and  a  horrible  placidity.  Not 
that  she  ever  moved  or  stirred  a  muscle ;  she  heard  it  all 
out  with  a  cold  set  smile  playing  around  the  corners  of 
her  wasted  mouth,  that  was  more  exasperating  by  far  to 
behold  than  any  amount  of  contradiction  would  have  been 
to  listen  to.  It  goaded  Hugh  into  a  perfect  delirium  of 
feverish  self-revelation.  He  would  not  submit  to  be  thus 
openly  defied;  he  must  tell  her  all — all — all,  till  she 
believed  him. 

With  eager  lips,  he  began  his  story  from  the  very  be- 
ginning, recapitulating  point  by  point  his  interview  with 
Elsie  in  the  Hall  grounds,  her  rushing  away  from  him  to 
the  roots  of  the  poplar,  her  mad  leap  into  the  swirling  black 
water,  his  attempt  to  rescue  her,  his  unconsciousness,  and 
his  failure.  He  told  it  all  with  dramatic  completeness. 
Winifred  saw  and  heard  every  scene  and  tone  and  emotion 
as  he  reproduced  it.  Then  he  went  on  to  tell  her  how  he 
came  to  himself  again  on  the  bank  of  the  dike,  and  how 
in  cold  and  darkness  he  formed  his  Plan,  that  fatal,  hor- 
rible, successful  Plan,  which  he  had  ever  since  been  en- 
gaged in  carrying  out  and  in  detesting.  He  described 
how  he  returned  to  the  inn,  unobserved  and  untracked; 
how  he  forged  the  first  compromising  letter  from  Elsie; 
and  how,  once  embarked  upon  that  career  of  deceit,  there 
was  no  drawing  back  for  him  in  crime  after  crime  till 
the  present  moment  He  despised  himself  for  it;  but  still 
he  told  it.  Next  came  the  episode  of  Elsie's  bedroom; 
the  theft  of  the  ring  and  the  other  belongings ;  the  hasty 
flight,  the  fall  from  the  creeper;  and  his  subsequent  hor- 
ror of  the  physical  surroundings  connected  with  that 
hateful  night  adventure.  In  his  agony  of  self-accusation 
he  spared  her  no  circumstance,  no  petty  detail :  bit  by  bit 
he  retold  the  whole  story  in  all  its  hideous  inhuman  ghast- 
liness — the  walk  to  Orfordness,  the  finding  of  the  watch, 


RETRIBUTION.  319 

the  furtive  visit  to  Elsie's  grave,  his  horror  of  Winifred's 
proposed  picnic 'to  that  very  spot  a  year  later.  He  ran, 
unabashed,  in  an  ecstacy  of  humiliation,  through  the  en- 
tire tale  of  his  forgeries  and  his  deceptions:  the  sending 
of  the  ring;  the  audacious  fiction  of  Elsie's  departure  to 
a  new  home  in  Australia :  the  long  sequence  of  occasional 
letters;  the  living  lie  he  had  daily  and  hourly  acted  before 
her.  And  all  the  while,  as  he  truly  said,  with  slow  tears 
rolling  one  by  one  down  his  dark  cheeks,  he  knew  himself 
a  murderer:  he  felt  himself  a  murderer;  and  all  the  while, 
poor  Elsie  was  lying,  dishonored  and  unknown,  a  nameless 
corpse,  in  her  pauper  grave  upon  that  stormy  sand-pit. 

Oh,  the  joy  and  relief  of  that  tardy  confession!  the  gush 
and  flow  of  those  pent-up  feelings!  For  three  long  years 
and  more,  he  had  locked  it  all  up  in  his  inmost  soul, 
chafing  and  seething  with  the  awful  secret;  and  now  at 
last  he  had  let  it  all  out,  in  one  burst  of  confidence,  to  the 
uttermost  item. 

As  for  Winifred,  she  heard  him  out  in  solemn  silence 
to  the  bitter  end,  with  ever  growing  contempt  and  shame 
and  hatred.  She  could  not  lift  her  eyes  to  his  face,  so  much 
his  very  earnestness  horrified  and  appalled  her.  The  man's 
aptitude  for  lying  struck  her  positively  dumb.  The  hid- 
eous ingenuity  with  which  he  accounted  for  everything — 
the  diabolically  clever  way  in  which  he  had  woven  in,  one 
after  the  other,  the  ring,  the  watch,  the  letters,  the  picnic, 
the  lonely  tramp  to  Orfordness — smote  her  to  the  heart 
with  a  horrible  loathing  for  the  vile  wretch  she  had  con- 
sented to  marry.  That  she  had  endured  so  long  such  a 
miserable  creature's  bought  caresses  filled  her  inmost  soul 
with  a  sickening  sense  of  disgust  and  horror.  She  cow- 
ered and  crouched  closer  and  closer  in  her  remote  corner; 
she  felt  that  his  presence  there  actually  polluted  the  car- 
riage she  occupied;  she  longed  for  Marseilles,  for  San 
Remo,  for  release,  that  she  might  get  at  least  farther  and 
farther  away  from  him.  She  could  almost  have  opened 
the  door  in  her  access  of  horror  and  jumped  from  the 
train  while  still  in  motion,  so  intense  was  her  burning 
and  goading  desire  to  escape  forever  from  his  poisonous 
neighborhood. 

At  last,  as  Hugh  with  flushed  face  and  eager  eyes 


320  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

calmed  down  a  little  from  his  paroxysm  of  self-abasement 
and  self-revelation,  Winifred  raised  her  eyes  once  more 
from  the  ground  and  met  her  husband's — ah,  heaven! — 
that  she  should  have  to  call  that  thing  her  husband!  His 
acting  chilled  her;  his  pretended  tears  turned  her  cold 
with  scorn.  "Is  that  all?"  she  asked  in  an  icy  voice.  "Is 
your  romance  finished?" 

"That's  all!"  Hugh  cried,  burying  his  face  in  his  hands 
and  bending  down  his  body  to  the  level  of  his  knees  in 
utter  and  abject  self-humiliation.  "Winifred!  Winifred! 
it's  no  romance.  W'on't  you,  even  now,  even  now,  be- 
lieve me?" 

"It's  clever — clever — extremely  clever!"  Winifred 
answered  in  a  tone  of  unnatural  calmness.  "I  don't  deny 
it  shows  great  talent.  If  you'd  turned  your  attention 
seriously  to  novel-writing,  which  is  your  proper  metier, 
instead  of  to  the  law,  for  which  you've  too  exuberant  an 
imagination,  you'd  have  succeeded  ten  thousand  times 
better  there  than  you  could  ever  do  at  what  you're  pleased 
to  consider  your  divine  poetry.  Your  story,  I  allow,  hangs 
together  in  every  part  with  remarkable  skill.  It's  a  pity 
I  should  happen  to  know  it  all  from  beginning  to  end  for 
a  tissue  of  falsehoods. — Hugh,  you're  the  profoundest  and 
most  eminent  of  liars. — I've  known  people  before  who 
would  tell  a  lie  to  serve  their  own  ends,  when  there  was 
anything  to  gain  by  it. — I've  known  people  before  who, 
when  a  lie  or  the  truth  would  either  of  them  suit  their 
purposes  equally,  told  the  lie  by  preference  out  of  pure 
love  of  it — But  I've  never  till  to-night  met  anybody  on 
earth  who  would  tell  a  lie  for  the  mere  lie's  sake,  to  make 
himself  look  even  more  utterly  mean  and  despicable  and 
small  than  he  is  by  nature. — You've  done  that.  You've 
reached  that  unsurpassed  depth  of  duplicity.  You've  de- 
liberately invented  a  clever  tissue  of  concerted  lies — even 
you  yourself  couldn't  fit  them  all  in  so  neat  and  pat  on  the 
spur  of  the  moment — you  must  have  worked  your  ro- 
mance up  by  careful  stages  in  your  own  mind  beforehand 
— and  all  for  what?  To  prove  yourself  innocent?  Oh  no ; 
not  at  all !  but  to  make  yourself  out  even  worse  than  you 
are — a  liar,  a  forger,  and  all  but  a  murderer. — I  loathe  you; 
I  despise  you. — For  all  your  acting  you  know  you're  lying 


RETRIBUTION.  321 

to  me  even  now,  this  minute.  You  know  that  Elsie  Chal- 
loner,  whom  you  pretend  to  be  dead,  is  awaiting  your 
own  arrival  to-night  by  arrangement  at  San  Remo." 

Hugh  flung  himself  back  in  the  final  extremity  of  utter 
despair  on  the  padded  cushions.  He  had  played  his  last 
card  with  Winifred,  and  lost.  His  very  remorse  availed 
him  nothing.  His  very  confession  was  held  to  increase 
his1  sin.  What  could  he  do?  Whither  turn?  He  knew  no 
answer.  He  rocked  himself  up  and  down  on  his  seat  in 
hopeless  misery.  The  worst  had  come.  He  had  blurted 
out  all.  And  Winifred,  Winifred  would  not  believe  him. 

"I  wish  it  was  true !"  he  cried ;  "I  wish  it  was  true,  Win- 
nie! I  wish  she  was  there.  But  it  isn't;  it  isn't!  She's 
dead!  I  killed  her!  and  her  blood  has  weighed  upon  my 
head  ever  since!  I  pay  for  it  now!  I  killed  her!  I  killed 
her!" 

"Listen!" 

Winifred  had  risen  to  her  full  height  in  the  coupe  once 
more,  and  was  standing,  gaunt  and  haggard  and  deadly 
wan  like  a  shrunken  little  tragedy  queen  above  him.  Her 
pale  white  face  showed  paler  and  whiter  and  more  death- 
like still  by  the  feeble  light  of  the  struggling  oil-lamp; 
and  her  bloodless  lips  trembled  and  quivered  visibly  with 
inner  passion  as  she  tried  to  repress  her  overpowering 
indignation  with  one  masterful  effort.  "Listen!"  she  said, 
with  fierce  intensity.  "What  you  say  is  false.  I  know 
you're  lying  to  me.  Warren  Relf  told  me  himself  the  other 
day  in  London  that  Elsie  Challoner  was  still  alive,  and 
living,  where  you  know  she  lives,  over  there  at  San 
Remo." 

Warren  Relf!  That  serpent!  That  reptile!  That 
eavesdropper!  Then  this  was  the  creature's  mean  re- 
venge! He  had  lied  that  despicable  lie  to  Winifred! 
Hugh  hated  him  in  his  soul  more  fiercely  than  ever.  He 
was  baffled  once  more;  and  always  by  that  same  malig- 
nant intriguer! 

"Where  did  you  see  Relf?"  he  burst  out  angrily.  His 
indignation,  flaring  up  to  white-heat  afresh  at  this  latest 
machination  of  his  ancient  enemy,  gave  new  strength  to 
his  words  and  new  point  to  his  hatred.  "I  thought  I  told 


322  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

you  long  since  at  Whitestrand  to  hold  no  further  com- 
munication with  that  wretched  being!" 

But  Winifred  by  this  time,  worn  out  with  excitement, 
had  fallen  back  speechless  and  helpless  on  the  cushions. 
Her  feeble  strength  was  fairly  exhausted.  The  fatigue  of 
the  preparations,  the  stormy  passage,  the  long  spell  of 
traveling,  the  night  journey,  and,  added  to  it  all,  this  ter- 
rible interview  with  the  man  she  had  once  loved,  but  now 
despised  and  hated,  had  proved  too  much  in  the  end  for 
her  weakened  constitution.  A  fit  of  wild  incoherence  had 
overtaken  her;  she  babbled  idly  on  her  seat  in  broken  sen- 
tences. Her  muttered  words  were  full  of  "mother"  and 
"home"  and  "Elsie."  Hugh  felt  her  pulse.  He  knew  it 
was  delirium.  His  one  thought  now  was  to  reach  San 
Remo  as  quickly  as  possible.  If  only  she  could  live  to 
know  Warren  Relf  had  told  her  a  lie,  and  that  Elsie  was 
dead — dead — dead  and  buried! 

Perhaps  even  this  story  about  Warren  Relf  and  what 
he  had  told  her  was  itself  but  a  product  of  the  fever  and 
delirium!  But  more  probably  not.  The  man  who  could 
open  other  people's  letters,  the  man  who  could  plot  and 
plan  and  intrigue  in  secret  to  set  another  man's  wife  against 
uppermost  to  hurt  his  enemy  and  to  serve  his  purpose. 
He  knew  that  lie  would  distress  and  torture  Winifred, 
and  he  had  struck  at  Hugh,  like  a  coward  that  he  was, 
through  a  weak,  hysterical,  dying  woman !  He  had  played 
on  the  mean  chord  of  feminine  jealousy.  Hugh  hated  him 
as  he  had  never  hated  him  before.  He  should  pay  for  this 
soundly — the  cur,  the  scoundrel! 


CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE  SHIELD. 

That  self-same  night,  another  English  passenger  of  our 
acquaintance  was  speeding  in  hot  haste  due  southward  to 
San  Remo,  not  indeed  by  the  Calais  and  Marseilles  ex- 
press, but  by  the  rival  route  via  Boulogne,  the  Mont 


THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE  SHIELD.  323 

Cenis,  Turin,  and  Savona.  Warren  Relf  had  chosen  the 
alternative  road  by  deliberate  design,  lest  Hugh  Massinger 
and  he  should  happen  to  clash  by  the  way,  and  a  needless 
and  unseemly  scene  should  perhaps  take  place  before 
Winifred's  very  eyes  at  some  intermediate  station. 

It  was  by  the  merest  accident  in  the  world,  indeed,  that 
Warren  had  heard,  in  the  nick  of  opportunity,  of  the 
Massingers'  projected  visit  to  San  Remo.  For  some  weeks 
before,  busy  with  the  "boom,"  he  had  hardly  ever  dropped 
in  for  a  gossip  at  his  club  in  Piccadilly.  Already  he  had 
sent  off  his  mother  and  sister  to  the  Riviera — this  time, 
too,  much  to  his  pride  and  delight,  minus  the  wonted 
dead-weight  cargo  of  consumptive  pupils — and  being  thus 
left  entirely  to  his  own  devices  at  128  Bletchingley  Road, 
he  had  occupied  every  moment  of  his  crowded  day  with 
some  good  hard  work  in  finishing  sketches  and  touching 
up  pictures  commissioned  in  advance  from  his  summer 
studies,  before  setting  out  himself  for  winter  quarters. 
But  on  the  particular  night  when  Hugh  Massinger  came 
up  to  town  en  route  for  the  sunny  South  with  Winifred, 
Warren  Relf,  having  completed  a  fair  day's  work  for  a 
fair  day's  wage  in  his  own  studio — he  was  fulfilling  an 
engagement  to  enlarge  a  sketch  of  the  Martellos  at  Aide- 
burgh  for  some  Sheffield  cutlery-duke  or  some  Man- 
chester cotton-marquis — strolled  round  in  the  evening  for 
a  cigar  and  a  chat  on  the  comfortable  lounges  of  the 
Mother  of  Genius. 

In  the  cosy  smoking-room  at  the  Cheyne  Row  Club, 
he  found  Hatherley  already  installed  in  a  big  armchair, 
discussing  coffee  and  the  last  new  number  of  the  "Nine- 
teenth Century." 

"Hullo,  Relf!  The  remains  of  the  Bard  were  in  here 
just  now,"  Hatherley  exclaimed  as  he  entered.  "You've 
barely  missed  him.  If  you'd  dropped  in  only  ten  minutes 
earlier,  you  might  have  inspected  the  interesting  relics. 
But  he's  gone  back  to  his  hotel  by  this  time,  I  fancy.  The 
atmosphere  of  Cheyne  Row  seems  somewhat  too  redolent 
of  vulgar  Cavendish  for  his  refined  taste.  He^  smokes 
nothing  nowadays  himself  but  the  best  regalias!" 

"What,  Massinger?"  Relf  cried  in  some  slight  surprise. 
"How  was  he,  Hatherley,  and  what  was  he  doing  in  town 


324  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

at  this  time  of  year?  All  good  squires  ought  surely  to  be 
down  in  the  country  now  at  their  hereditary  work  of  sup- 
plying the  market  with  a  due  proportion  of  hares  and 
partridges." 

"Oh,  he's  a  poor  wreck,"  Hatherley  answered  lightly. 
"You've  hit  it  off  exactly — sunk  to  the  level  of  the  landed 
aristocracy.  He  exhales  an  aroma  of  vested  interests. 
Real  estate's  his  Moloch  at  present,  and  he  bows  the  knee 
to  solidified  sea-mud  in  the  temple  of  Rimmon.  He  has 
no  views  on  anything  in  particular,  I  believe,  but  riparian 
proprietorship:  complains  still  of  the  German  Ocean  for 
disregarding  the  sacred  rights  of  property;  and  holds 
that  the  sole  business  of  an  enlightened  British  legislature 
is  to  keep  the  sand  from  blowing  in  at  his  own  inviolable 
dining-room  windows.  Poor  company,  in  fact,  since  he 
descended  to  the  Squirearchy.  He's  never  forgiven  me 
that  playful  little  bantering  ballade  of  mine,  either,  that 
I  sent  to  the  'Charing  Cross  Review,'  you  remember, 
chaffing  him  about  his  'Life's  Tomfoolery,'  or  whatever 
else  he  called  the  precious  nonsense.  For  my  part,  I  hate 
such  vapid  narrowness.  A  man  should  be  able  to  bear 
chaff  with  good-humor.  Talk  about  the  genus  irritabile, 
indeed:  your  poet  should  feel  himself  superior  to  vindic- 
tiveness — 'Dowered  with  the  love  of  love,  the  hate  of 
hate,  the  scorn  of  scorn/  as  a  distinguished  peer  admirably 
words  it." 

"How  long's  he  going  to  stop  in  town — do  you  know?" 
Relf  asked  curiously. 

"Thank  goodness,  he's  not  going  to  stop  at  all,  my  dear 
fellow.  If  he  were,  I'd  run  down  to  Brighton  for  the 
interval.  A  month  of  Massinger  at  the  Cheyne  Row 
would  be  a  perfect  harvest  for  the  seaside  lodgings.  But 
I'm  happy  to  tell  you  he's  going  to  remove  his  mortal 
remains — for  the  soul  of  him's  dead — dead  and  buried 
long  ago  in  the  Whitestrand  sandhills — to  San  Remo  to  • 
morrow.  Poor  little  Mrs.  Massinger's  seriously  ill,  I'm 
sorry  to  say.  Too  much  Bard  has  told  at  last  upon  her. 
Bard  for  breakfast,  Bard  for  lunch,  and  Bard  for  dinner 
would  undermine  in  time  the  soundest  constitution.  Sir 
Anthony  finds  it's  produced  in  her  case  suppressed  gout, 
or  tubercular  diathesis,  or  softening  of  the  brain,  or  some- 


THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE  SHIELD.  325 

thing  lingering  and  humorous  of  that  sort;  and  he's 
ordered  her  off,  post  haste,  by  the  first  express,  to  the 
Mediterranean.  Massinger  objected  at  first  to  San  Remo, 
he  tells  me,  probably  because,  with  his  usual  bad  taste, 
he  didn't  desire  to  enjoy  your  agreeable  society ;  but  that 
skimpy  little  woman,  gout  or  no  gout,  has  a  'will  of  her 
own,  I  can  tell  you;  San  Remo  she  insists  upon,  and  to 
San  Remo  the  Bard  must  go  accordingly.  You  should 
have  seen  him  chafing  with  an  internal  fire  as  he  let  it  all 
out  to  us,  hint  by  hint,  in  the  billiard-room  this  evening. 
Poor  skimpy  little  woman,  though,  I'm  awfully  sorry  for 
her.  It's  hard  lines  on  her.  She  had  the  makings  of  a 
nice  small  hostess  in  her  once;  but  the  Bard's  ruined  her 
—sucked  her  dry  and  chucked  her  away — and  she's  dying 
of  him  now,  from  what  he  tells  me." 

Warren  Relf  looked  back  with  a  start  of  astonishment 
''To  San  Remo?"  he  cried.  "You're  sure,  Hatherley,  he 
said  to  San  Remo?" 

"Perfectly  certain.  San  Remo  it  is.  Observe,  hi  pres- 
to, there's  no  deception.  He  gave  me  this  card  in  case  of 
error:  'Hug-h  Massinger,  for  the  present,  Poste  Restante, 
San  Remo.'  No  other  address  forthcoming  as  yet.  He 
expects  to  settle  down  at  a  villa  when  he  gets  there." 

Relf  made  up  his  mind  with  a  single  plunge  as  he 
knocked  his  ash  off.  "I  shall  go  by  to-morrow's  express 
to  the  Riviera,"  he  said  shortly. 

"To  pursue  the  Bard?  I  wouldn't,  if  I  were  you.  To 
tell  you  the  truth,  I  know  he  doesn't  love  you." 

"He  has  reason,  I  believe.  The  feeling  is  to  some 
extent  mutual.  No,  not  to  pursue  him — to  prevent  mis- 
chief.— Hand  me  over  the  Continental  Bradshaw,  will 
you? — Thanks.  That'll  do.  Do  you  know  whidi  line? 
Marseilles,  I  suppose?  Did  he  happen  to  mention  it?" 

"He  told  me  he  was  going  by  Dijon  and  Lyons." 

"All  right.  That's  it.  The  Marseilles  route.  Arrive 
at  San  Remo  at  4:30.  I'll  go  round  the  other  way  by 
Turin  and  intercept  him.  Trains  arrive  within  five  min- 
utes of  one  another,  I  see.  That'll  be  just  in  time  to  pre- 
vent any  contretemps. " 

"Your  people  are  at  San  Remo  already,  I  believe?" 

"My  people — yes.     But  how  did'  you  know?    They 


32«  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

were  at  Mentone  for  a  while,  and  they  only  went  on  home 
to  the  Villa  Rossa  the  day  before  yesterday." 

"So  I  heard  from  Miss  Relf,"  Hatherley  answered  with 
a  slight  cough.  "She  happened  to  be  writing  to  me — 
about  a  literary  matter — a  mere  question  of  current  art- 
criticism — on  Wednesday  morning." 

Warren  hardly  noticed'  the  slight  hesitation:  and  there 
was  nothing  odd  in  Edie's  writing  to  Hatherley :  that  best 
of  sisters  was  always  jogging  the  memory  of  inattentive 
critics.  While  Edie  lived,  indeed,  her  brother's  name  was 
never  likely  to  be  forgotten  in  the  weekly  organs  of  artis- 
tic opinion.  She  insured  it,  if  anything,  an  undue  promi- 
nence. For  her  much  importunity,  the  sternest  of  them 
all,  like  the  unjust  judge,  was  compelled  in  time  to  notice 
every  one  of  her  brother's  performances. 

So  Warren  hurried  off  by  himself  at  all  speed  to  San 
Remo,  and  reached  it  at  almost  the  same  moment  as  Mas- 
singer.  If  Hugh  and  Elsie  were  to  meet  unexpectedly, 
Warren  felt  the  shock  might  be  positively  dangerous. 

As  he  emerged  from  the  station,  he  hired  a  close  car- 
riage, and  ordered  the  vetturino  to  draw  up  on  the  far  side 
of  the  road  and  wait  a  few  minutes  till  he  was  prepared  for 
starting.  Then  he  leaned  back  in  his  seat  in  the  shade 
of  the  hood,  and  held  himself  in  readiness  for  the  arrival 
of  the  Paris  train  from  Ventimiglia. 

He  had  waited  only  a  quarter  of  an  hour  when  Hugh 
Massinger  came  out  hastily  and  called  a  cab.  Two  por- 
ters helped  him  to  carry  out  Winifred,  now  seriously  ill, 
and  muttering  inarticulately  as  they  placed  her  in  the  car- 
riage. Hugh  gave  an  inaudible  order  to  the  driver,  who 
drove  off  at  once  with  a  nod  and  a  smile  and  a  cheery  "Si, 
signer." 

"Follow  that  carriage!"  Warren  said  in  Italian  to  his  own 
cabman.  The  driver  nodded  and  followed  closely.  They 
drove  up  through  the  narrow  crowded  little  streets  of  the 
old  quarter,  and  stopped  at  last  opposite  a  large  and 
dingy  yellow-washed  pension,  in  the  modern  part  of  the 
town,  about  the  middle  of  the  Avenue  Vittorio-Emman- 
uele.  The  house  was  new,  but  congenitally  shabby. 
Hugh's  carriage  blocked  the  way  already.  Warren  waite'd 
outside  for  some  ten  minutes  without  showing  his  face, 


THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE  SHIELD.  327 

till  he  thought  the  Massingers  would  have  engaged  rooms: 
then  he  entered  the  hall  boldly  and  inquired  if  he  could 
have  lodgings. 

"On  what  floor  has  the  gentleman  who  has  just  arrived 
placed  himself?"  he  asked  of  the  landlord,  a  portly  Pied- 
montese,  of  august  dimensions. 

"On  the  second  story,  signer." 

"Then  I  will  go  on  the  third/'  Warren  Relf  answered 
with  short  decision.  And  they  found  him  a  room  forth- 
with without  further  parley. 

The  pension  was  one  of  those  large  and  massive  solid 
buildings,  so  common  on  the  Riviera,  let  out  in  flats  or  in 
single  apartments,  and  with  a  deep  well  of  a  square  stair- 
case occupying  the  entire  center  of  the  block  like  a  cov- 
ered courtyard.  As  Warren  Relf  mounted  to  his  room 
on  the  third  floor,  with  the  chatty  Swiss  waiter  from  the 
canton  Ticino,  who  carried  his  bag,  he  asked  quietly  if  the 
lady  on  the  segondo  who  seemed  so  ill  was  in  any  immedi- 
ate or  pressing  danger. 

"Danger,  signer?  She  is  ill,  certainly;  they  carried 
her  upstairs:  she  couldn't  have  walked  it.  Ill — but  ill." 
He  expanded  his  hands  and  pursed  his  lips  up. — "But 
what  of  that?  The  house  expects  it.  They  come  here 
to  die,  many  of  these  English.  The  signora  no  doubt 
will  die  soon.  She's  a  very  bad  case.  She  has  hardly  any 
life  in  her." 

Little  reassured  by  this  cold  comfort,  Warren  sat  down 
at  the  table  at  once,  as  soon  as  he  had  washed  away  the 
dust  of  travel,  and  scribbled  off  a  hasty  note  to  Edie — 

"Dearest  E., 

"Just  arrived.  Hope  you  received  my  telegram 
from  Paris.  For  heaven's  sake,  don't  let  Elsie  stir  out  of 
the  house  till  I  have  seen  you.  This  is  most  imperative. 
Massinger  and  Mrs.  Massinger  are  here  at  this  pension. 
He  has  brought  her  South  for  her  health's  sake.  She's 
dying  rapidly.  I  wouldn't  for  worlds  let  Elsie  see  either 
of  them  in  their  present  condition :  above  all,  she  mustn't 
run  up  against  them  unexpectedly.  I  may  not  be  able 
to  sneak  around  to-night,  but  at  "all  hazards  keep  Elsie 
in  till  I  can  get  to  the  Villa  Rossa  to  consult  with  you. 


328  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

Elsie  must  of  course  return  to  England  at  once,  now 
Massinger's  come  here.  We  have  to  face  a  very  serious 
crisis.  I  won't  write  further,  preferring  to  come  and  ar- 
range in  person.  Meanwhile,  say  nothing  to  Elsie  just 
yet;  I'll  break  it  to  her  myself. 

"In  breathless  haste, 

"Yours  ever,  very  affectionately, 

"Warren." 

He  sent  the  note  round  with  many  warnings  by  the 
Swiss  waiter  to  his  mother's  house.  When  Edie  got  it, 
she  could  have  cried  with  chagrin.  Could  anything  on 
earth  have  been  more  unfortunate?  To  think  that  Elsie 
should  just  have  gone  out  shopping  before  the  note  ar- 
rived— and  should  be  going  to  call  at  the  Grand  Hotel 
Royal  in  that  very  Avenue  Vittorio-Emmanuele ! 

If  Warren  had  only  known  that  fact,  he  would  have 
gone  out  at  all  risks  to  intercept  and  prevent  her.  But  as 
things  stood,  he  preferred  to  lurk  unseen  on  his  third 
floor  till  night  came  on.  He  wanted  to  keep  as  quiet  as 
possible.  He  didn't  wish  Massinger  to  know,  for  the 
present  at  least,  of  his  arrival  in  San  Remo.  Later  on, 
perhaps,  when  Elsie  had  safely  started  for  England,  he 
might  see  whether  he  could  be  of  any  service  to  Winifred. 

And  to  Hugh,  too;  for  in  spite  of  all,  though  he  had 
told  Hatherley  their  dislike  was  mutual,  he  pitied  Massin- 
ger too  profoundly  now  not  to  forget  his  righteous  resent- 
ment at  such  a  moment.  If  Warren's  experience  and 
connection  at  San  Remo  were  of  any  avail,  he  would  glad- 
ly place  them  at  Massinger's  disposal.  Too  manly  him- 
self to  harbor  a  grudge,  he  scarcely  recognized  the  exist- 
ence of  vindictive  feeling  in  others. 

Warren  Relf!  That  serpent!  That  reptile!  That 
eavesdropper!  How  strangely  each  of  us  looks  to  each! 
How  grotesquely  our  perverted  inner  mirror,  with  its 
twists  and  curves,  distorts  and  warps  the  lineaments  of 
our  fellows!  Warren  Relf!  That  implacable  malignant 
enemy,  forever  plotting  and  planning  and  caballing 
against  him!  Why,  Warren  Relf,  whom  Hugh  so  im- 
aged himself  in  his  angry  mind,  was  sitting  that  moment 
with  his  head  bent  down  to  the  bare  table,  and  muttering 


PROVING  HIS  CASE.  329 

half  aloud  through  his  teeth  to  himself:  "Poor,  poor  Mas- 
singer!  How  hard  for  him  to  bear!  Alone  with  that  un- 
happy little  dying  soul !  Without  one  friend  to  share  his 
trouble!  I  wish  I  could  do  anything  on  earth  to  help 
him!" 


CHAPTER  XXXVII. 

PROVING  HIS  CASE. 

At  the  pension,  Hugh  had  engaged  in  haste  a  dull  private 
sitting-room  on  the  second  floor,  with  bedroom  and 
dressing-room  adjoining  at  the  side;  and  here  he  laid 
Winifred  down  on  the  horse-hair  sofa,  wearied  out  with 
her  long  journey  and  her  fit  of  delirium,  but  now  restored 
for  the  time  being  by  rest  and  food,  in  one  of  those  mar- 
velous momentary  rallies  which  so  often  tempt  consump- 
tive patients  to  use  up  in  a  single  dying  flicker  their  small 
remaining  reserve  of  vital  energy.  The  house  itself  was 
dingy,  stingy,  bare,  and  second-rate;  but  the  soft  Italian 
air  and  the  full  sunshine  that  flooded  the  room  through 
the  open  windows  had  a  certain  false  exhilarating  effect, 
like  a  glass  of  champagne;  and  under  their  stimulating 
influence  Winifred  felt  a  temporary  strength  to  which  she 
had  long  been  quite  unaccustomed.  The  waiter  had 
brought  her  up  refreshments  on  a  tray,  soup  and  sweet- 
breads and  country  wine — the  plain  sound  generous  Li- 
gurian  claret — and  she  had  eaten  and  drunk  with  an  ap- 
parent avidity  which  fairly  took  her  husband's  breath 
away.  The  food  supplied  her  with  a  sudden  access  of 
hectic  energy.  "Wheel  me  over  to  the  window,"  she  cried 
in  a  stronger  voice  to  Hugh.  And  Hugh  wheeled  the 
sofa  over  as  he  was  bid  to  a  point  where  she  could  see 
the  town  and  the  hills  and  the  villas  and  the  lemon- 
gardens,  and  the  tall  date-palms  with  their  feathery  foliage 
on  the  piazza  opposite,  to  the  cobalt-blue  sea,  and  the 
gracious  bays,  and  the  endless  ranges  of  the  Maritime  Alps 
on  either  side,  toward  Bordighera  one  way  and  Taggia 
the  other. 


330  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

It  was  beautiful,  beautiful,  very  beautiful.  For  the 
moment  the  sight  soothed  Winifred.  She  was  content 
now  to  die  where  she  lay.  Her  wounded  heart  asked 
nothing  further  from  unkind  fortune.  She  looked  up  at 
her  husband  with  a  stony  gaze.  "Hugh,"  she  said,  in 
firm  but  grimly  resolute  tones,  with  no  trace  of  tenderness 
or  softening  in  her  voice,  "bury  me  here.  I  like  the  place. 
Don't  try  to  take  me  home  in  a  box  to  Whitestrand." 

Her  very  callousness,  if  callousness  it  were,  cut  him 
to  the  heart.  That  so  young  and  frail  and  delicate  a  girl 
should  talk  of  her  own  death  with  such  seeming  insensi- 
bility was  indeed  terrible.  The  proud  hard  man  was 
broken  at  last.  Shame  and  remorse  touched  his  soul. 
He  burst  into  tears,  and  kneeling  by  her  side,  tried  to  take 
her  hand  with  some  passing  show  of  affection  in  his. 
Winifred  withdrew  it,  coldly  and  silently,  as  his  own  ap- 
proached it.  "Winnie,"  he  cried,  bending  over  her  face, 
"I  don't  ask  you  to  forgive  me.  You  can't  forgive  me. 
You  could  never  forgive  me  for  the  wrong  I've  done  you. 
But  I  do  ask  you,  from  my  soul  do  I  ask  you,  in  this  last 
extremity,  to  believe  me  and  listen  to  me.  I  did  not  lie 
to  you  last  night.  It  was  all  true,  what  I  told  you  in  the 
coupe.  I've  never  intrigued  against  you  in  the  way  you 
believe.  I've  never  deceived  you  for  the  purpose  you 
suppose.  I've  treated  you  cruelly,  heartlessly,  wickedly 
— I  acknowledge  that;  but  oh,  Winnie,  Winnie,  I  can't 
bear  you  to  die  as  you  will,  believing  what  you  do  believe 
about  me. — This  is  the  hardest  part  of  all  my  punishment. 
Don't  leave  me  so!  My  wife,  my  wife,  don't  kill  me 
with  this  coldness!" 

Winifred  looked  over  at  him  more  stonily  than  ever. 
"Hugh,"  she  said  with  a  very  slow  and  distinct  utterance, 
"even-  word  you  say  to  me  in  this  hateful  strain  only 
increases  and  deepens  my  loathing  and  contempt  for  you. 
— You  see  I'm  dying — you  know  I'm  dying.  In  your 
way,  I  really  and  truly  believe  you  feel  some  tiny  twinge  of 
compunction,  some  faint  soft  of  pity  and  regret  and 
sympathy  for  me.  You  know  you've 'killed  me,  broken 
my  heart;  and  in  a  careless  fashion,  you're  rather  sorry 
for  it.  If  you  knew  how,  you'd  like,  without  bothering 
yourself  much,  to  console  me.  And  yet,  to  lie  is  so  in- 


PROVING  HIS  CASE.  331 

grained  in  the  very  warp  and  woof  of  your  nature,  that 
even  so,  you  can't  help  lying  to  me!  You  can't  help  lying 
to  your  own  wife,  at  death's  door,  in  her  last  extremity — 
your  own  wife,  whom  you've  slowly  ground  down  and 
worn  out  with  your  treachery — your  own  wife,  whom 
you've  betrayed  and  tortured  and  killed  at  last  for  that 
other  woman! — Don't  I  know  it  all,  so  that  you  can't 
deceive  me?  Don't  I  know  every  thought  and  wish  of 
your  heart?  Don't  I  know  how  you've  kept  her  letters 
and  her  watch?  Don't  I  know  ho'w  you've  brooded  and 
moaned  and  whispered  about  her?  Don't  I  know  how 
you've  brought  me  to  San  Remo  to-day,  dying  as  I  am, 
to  be  near  her  and  to  caress  her  when  I'm  dead  and 
buried? — You've  tried  to  hound  me  and  drive  me  to  my 
grave,  that  you  might  marry  Elsie. — You've  tried  to  mur- 
der me  by  slow  degrees,  that  you  might  marry  Elsie. — 
Well,  you've  carried  your  point:  you've  succeeded  at  last. 
— You've  killed  me  now,  or  as  good  as  killed  me;  and 
when  I'm  dead  and  gone,  you  can  marry  Elsie. — I  don't 
mind  that.  Marry  her  and*  be  done  with  it. — But  if  ever 
you  dare  to  tell  me  again  tfiat  lying  story  you  concocted 
last  night  so  glibly  in  the  coupe, — Hugh  Massinger,  I'll 
tell  you  in  earnest  what  I'll  do:  I'll  jump  out  of  that 
window  before  your  very  face  and  dash  myself  to  pieces  on 
the  ground  in  front  of  you." 

She  spoke  with  feverish  and  lurid  energy.  Hugh  Mas- 
singer  bent  his  head  to  his  knees  in  abject  wretchedness  as 
she  flung  that  threat  from  her  clenched  teeth  at  him.  His 
very  remorse  availed  him  nothing.  The  girl  was  adaman- 
tine, inexorable,  impervious  to  evidence.  Nothing  on 
earth  that  he  could  say  or  do  would  possibly  move  her. 
He  felt  himself  unjustly  treated  now;  and  he  pitied  Wini- 
fred. 

"Winifred,  Winifred,  my  poor  wronged  and  injured 
Winifred,"  he  cried  at  last',  in-  another  wild  outburst,  "I 
can  do  or  say  nothing,  I  know,  to  convince  you.  But  one 
thing  perhaps  will  make  you  hesitate  to  disbelieve  me. 
Look  here,  Winifred;  watch  me  closely!" 

A  happy  inspiration  had  come  to  his  aid.  He  brought 
over  the  little  round  table  from  the  corner  of  the  room 
and  planted  it  full  in  front  of  the  sofa  where  Winifred  was 


332  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

lying.  Then  he  set  a  chair  close  by  the  side,  and  selecting 
a  pen  from  his  writing-case,  began  to  produce  on  a  sheet 
of  note-paper,  under  Winifred's  very  eyes,  some  lines  of 
manuscript — in  Elsie's  handwriting.  Slowly  and  care- 
fully he  framed  each  letter  in  poor  dead  Elsie's  bold  and 
large-limbed  angular  character.  He  didn't  need  now  any 
copy  to  go  by ;  long  practice  had  taught  him  to  absolute 
perfection  each  twist  and  curl  and  flourish  of  her  pen — 
the  very  tails  of  her  gs,  the  backward  downstroke  of  her 
fs,  the  peculiar  unsteadiness  of  her  ss  and  her  ws.  Wini- 
fred, sitting  by  in  haughty  disdain,  pretended  not  even  to 
notice  his  strange  proceeding.  But  as  the  tell-tale  letter 
grew  on  apace  beneath  his  practised  pen — Elsie  all  over, 
past  human  conceiving — she  condescended  at  last,  by  an 
occasional  hasty  glimpse  or  side-glance,  to  manifest  her 
interest  in  this  singular  pantomime.  Hugh  persevered 
to  the  end  in  solemn  silence,  and  when  he  had  finished 
the  whole  short  letter,  he  handed  it  to  her  in  a  sort  of  sub- 
dued triumph.  She  took  it  with  a  gesture  of  supreme 
unconcern.  "Did  any  man  ever  take  such  pains  before," 
she  cried  ironically,  as  she  glanced  at  it  with  an  assump- 
tion of  profound  indifference,  "to  make  himself  out  to  his 
wife  a  liar,  a  forger,  and  perhaps  a  murderer!" 

Hugh  bit  his  lip  with  mortification,  and  watched  her 
closely.  The  tables  were  turned.  How  strange  that  he 
should  now  be  all  eager  anxiety  for  her  to  learn  the  truth 
he  had  tried  so  long  and  so  successfully  with  all  his  might 
to  conceal  from  her  keenest  and  most  prying  scrutiny! 

Winifred  scanned  the  forged  letter  for  a  minute  with 
apparent  carelessness.  But  as  she  read  and  re-read  it,  in 
a  mere  haze  of  perception,  some  shadow  of  doubt  for  the 
first  time  obtruded  itself  faintly  one  moment  upon  her 
uncertain  soul.  For  Hugh  had  indeed  chosen  his  speci- 
men letter  cleverly — ah,  that  hateful  cleverness  of  his! 
how  even  now  it  told  with  full  force  against  him !  When 
you  have  to  deal  with  so  cunning  a  rogue,  you  can  never 
be  sure.  The  more  certain  things  seem,  the  more  cause 
for  distrusting  them.  He  had  written  over  again  from 
memory  the  single  note  of  Elsie's — or  rather  of  his  own 
in  Elsie's  hand — that  Winifred  had  never  happened  at  all 
to  show  him — the  second  note  of  the  series,  the  one  he 


PROVING  HIS  CASE.  333 

dispatched  on  the  day  of  her  father's  death.  It  had 
reached  her  at  Invertanar  Castle,  redirected  from  White- 
strand,  two  mornings  later.  Winifred  had  read  the  few 
lines  as  soon  as  they  arrived,  and  then 'burned  the  page 
in  haste,  in  the  heat  and  flurry  of  that  tearful  time.  But 
now,  as  the  letter  lay  before  her  in  fac-simile  once  more, 
the  very  words  and  phrases  came  back  to  her  memory, 
as  they  had  come  back  to  Hugh's,  with  all  the  abnormal 
vividness  and  distinctness  of  such  morbid  moments.  Ill 
as  she  was — nay,  rather  dying — he  had  fairly  aroused  her 
feminine  curiosity.  "How  did  you  ever  come  to  know 
what  Elsie  wrote  me  that  day?"  she  asked  coldly. 

"Because  I  wrote  it  myself,"  Hugh  answered  with  an 
eager  forward  movement. 

For  half  a  minute,  Winifred's  soul  was  staggered.  It 
looked  plausible  enough;  he  might  have  forged  it.  He 
could  forge  anything.  Then  with  a  sudden  deep-drawn 
"Ah !"  a  fresh  solution  forced  itself  upon  her  mind.  "You 
wretch!"  she  cried,  holding  her  head  with  her  hands;  "I 
see  it  all  now!  How  dare  you  lie  to  me?  This  is  worse 
than  I  ever  dreamed  or  conceived.  Elsie  spent  that  week 
with  you  in  London !" 

With  a  loud  groan,  Hugh  flung  himself  back  on  his 
vacant  chair.  His  very  cleverness  had  recoiled  upon  him 
with  deadly  force  again.  The  inference  was  obvious! — 
too,  too,  too  obvious!  What  other  interpretation  could 
Winifred  possibly  put  upon  the  facts?  He  wondered  in 
his  heart  he  could  have  missed  that  easy  solution  himself. 
"She  wasn't  I"  he  cried  out  with  an  agonized  cry.  "She 
was  dead — dead — dead,  I  tell  you — drowned  and  buried 
at  Orfordness!" 

Winifred  looked  hard  at  him,  half  doubtful  still.  Could 
any  man  be  quite  so  false  and  heartless?  Admirably  as 
he  acted,  could  he  act  like  this?  What  tragedian  had 
ever  such  command  of  his  countenance?  Might  not  that 
strange  story  of  his,  so  pat  and  straight,  so  consonant 
with  the  facts,  so  neatly  adapted  in  every  detail  to  the 
known  circumstances,  perhaps  after  all  be  actually  true? 
Could  Elsie  be  really  and  truly  dead?  Could  ring  and 
letters  and  circumstantial  evidence  have  fallen  out,  not 
as  she  conceived,  but  as  Hugh  pretended? 


334  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

She  hardly  knew  which  thing  would  make  her  hate  and 
,  despise  him  most — the  forgery  or  the  lie:  that  long  de- 
ception, or  that  secret  intrigue:  his  silent  mourning  over 
a  dead  love,  or  his  clandestine  correspondence  with  a 
living  lover.  Whichever  was  worst,  she  would  choose 
to  believe ;  for  the  wickedest  course  was  likeliest  to  be  the 
true  one.  It  was  a  question  merely  when  he  had  lied  the 
most — now  or  then  ?  to  his  dying  wife  or  to  his  betrothed 
lover?  Winifred  gazed  on  at  him,  scorning  and  loathing 
him.  "I  can't  make  my  mind  up,"  she  muttered  slowly. 
"It's  hard  to  believe  that  Elsie's  dead.  But  for  Elsie's 
sake,  I  hope  so!  I  hope  so! — That  you  have  deceived 
me,  I  know  and  am  sure.  That  Elsie's  deceived  me,  I 
should  be  sorry  to  think,  though  I've  often  thought  it. 
Your  story,  incredible  as  it  may  be,  brings  home  all  the 
baseness  and  cruelty  to  yourself.  It  exculpates  Elsie. 
And  I  wish  I  could  believe  Elsie  was  innocent.  I  could 
endure  your  wickedness  if  only  I  knew  Elsie  didn't 
share  it!" 

Hugh  leaped  from  his  chair  with  his  hands  clasped. 
"Believe  what  you  will  about  me,"  he  cried.  "I  deserve 
it  all.  I  deserve  everything.  But  not  of  her — not  of  her, 
I  beg  of  you.  Believe  no  ill  of  poor  dead  Elsie!" 

Winifred  smiled  a  coldly  satirical  smile.  "So  much  de- 
votion does  you  honor  indeed,"  she  said  in  a  scathing 
voice.  ''Your  consideration  for  dead  Elsie's  reputation 
is  truly  touching. — I  only  see  one  flaw  in  the  case.  If 
Elsie's  dead,  how  did  Mr.  Relf  come  to  tell  me,  I  should 
like  to  know,  she  was  living  at  San  Remo?" 

"Relf!"  Hugh  cried,  taken  aback  once  more.  "Relf! 
Always  that  serpent!  That  wriggling,  insinuating,  back- 
stairs intriguer!  I  hate  the  wretch.  If  I  had  him  here 
now,  I'd  wring  his  wry  neck  for  him  with  the  greatest 
pleasure. — He's  at  the  bottom  of  everything  that  turns  up 
against  me.  He  told  you  a  lie,  that's  the  plain  explana- 
tion, and  he  told  it  to  baffle  me.  He  hates  me,  the  cur, 
and  he  wanted  to  make  my  game  harder.  He  knew  it 
\yould  sow  distrust  between  you  and  me  if  he  told  you  that 
lie ;  and  he  had  no  pity,  like  an  unmanly  sneak  that  he  is, 
even  on  a  poor  weak  helpless  woman."' 

"I  see,"  Winifred  murmured  with  exasperating  calm- 


PROVING  HIS  CASE.  336 

ness.  "He  told  me  the  truth.  It's  his  habit  to  tell  it.  And 
the  truth  happens  to  be  very  disconcerting  to  you,  by 
making  what  you're  frank  en'ough  to  describe  as  your 
game  a  little  harder.  The  word's  sufficient.  You  can 
never  do  anything  but  play  a  game.  That's  very  clear. 
I  understand  now.  I  prefer  Mr.  Relf's  assurance  to  yours, 
thank  you!" 

"Winifred,"  Hugh  cried  in  agony  of  despair,  "let  me 
tell  you  the  whole  story  again,  bit  by  bit,  act  by  act,  scene 
by  scene" — Winifred  smiled  derisively  at  the  theatrical 
phrase — "and  you  may  question  me  out  on  every  part  of 
it.  Cross-examine  me,  please,  like  a  hostile  lawyer,  to 
the  minutest  detail. — Oh,  Winnie,  I  want  you  to  know 
the  truth  now.  I  wish  you'd  believe  me.  I  can't  endure 
to  think  you  should  die  mistaking  me." 

His  imploring  look  and  his  evident  earnestness  shook 
Winifred's  wavering  mind  again.  Even  the  worst  of  men 
has  his  truthful  moments.  Her  resolution  faltered.  She 
began,  as  he  suggested,  cross-questioning  him  at  full. 
Hugh  answered  every  one  of  her  questions  at  once  with 
prompt  simplicity.  Those  answers  had  the  plain  ring  of 
reality  about  them.  A  clever  man  can  lie  ingeniously, 
but  he  can't  lie  on  the  spur  of  the  moment  for  long  to- 
gether. Winifred  left  no  test  untried.  She  asked  him 
as  to  the  arrangement  of  Elsie's  room;  as  to  the  tilings 
he  had  purloined  from  the  drawers  and  dressing-table; 
as  to  her  letters  to  the  supposed  Elsie  in  Australia,  all^of 
which  Hugh  had  of  course  intercepted  and  opened.  No- 
where for  one  moment  did  she  catch  him  tripping.  He 
gave  his  replies  plainly  and  straightforwardly.  The  fever 
of  confession  had  seized  hold  of  him  once  more.  The 
pent-up  secret  had  burst  its  bounds.  He  revealed  his 
inmost  soul  to  Winifred — he  even  admitted,  with  shame 
and  agony,  his  abiding  love  and  remorse  for  Elsie. 

Overcome  by  her  feelings,  Winifred  leaned  back  on  the 
sofa  and  cried.  Thank  Heaven,  thank  Heaven,  she  could 
cry  now.  He  was  glad  of  that  She  could  cry,  after  all. 
That  poor  little  cramped  and  cabined  nature,  turned  in 
upon  itself  so  long  for  lack  of  an  outlet,  found  vent  at 
last.  Hugh  cried  himself,  and  held  her  hand, 
momentary  impulse  of  womanly  softening,  she  allowed 


336  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

him  to  hold  it.  Her  wan  small  face  pleaded  piteously  with 
his  heart  "Dare  I,  Winnie?"  he  asked  with  a  faint  tremor, 
and  leaning  forward,  he  'kissed  her  forehead.  She  did 
not  withdraw  it.  He  thrilled  at  the  concession.  Then 
he  thought  with  a  pang  how  cruelly  he  had  worn  her 
young  life  out.  She  never  reproached  him ;  her  feelings 
went  far  too  deep  for  reproach.  But  she  cried  silently, 
silently,  silently. 

At  length  she  spoke.  "When  I'm  gone,"  she  said  in  a 
fainter  voice  now,  "you  must  put  up  a  stone  by  Elsie's 
grave.  I'm  glad  Elsie  at  least  was  true  to  me!'' 

Hugh's  heart  gave  a  bound.  Then  she  wavered  at  last! 
She  accepted  his  account!  She  knew  that  Elsie  was  dead 
and  buried!  He  had  carried  his  point.  She  believed 
him! — she  believed  him! 

Winifred  rose,  and  staggered  feebly  to  her  feet.  "I  shall 
go  to  bed  now,"  she  said  in  husky  accents.  "You  may 
send  for  a  doctor.  I  shan't  last  long.  But  on  the  whole, 
I  feel  better  so.  I  wanted  Elsie  to  be  alive  indeed,  be- 
cause I  hunger  and  thirst  for  sympathy,  and  Elsie  would 
give  it  to  me.  But  I'm  glad  at  least  Elsie  didn't  deceive 
me!"  She  paused  for  a  moment  and  wiped  her  eyes ;  then 
she  steadied  herself  by  the  bar  of  the  window — the  air 
blew  in  so  warm  and  fresh.  She  looked  out  at  the  palms 
and  the  blue,  blue  sea.  It  seemed  to  calm  her,  the  beau- 
tiful South.  She  gazed  long  and  wearily  at  the  glassy 
water.  But  her  dream  didn't  last  undisturbed  for  many 
minutes.  Of  a  sudden,  a  shade  came'  over  her  face.  Some- 
thing below  seemed  to  sting  and  appall  her.  She  started 
back,  tottering,  from  the  open  window.  "Hugh,  Hugh!" 
she  cried,  ghastly  pale  and  quivering,  "you  said  she  \vas 
dead! — you  said  she  was  dead!  You  lie' to  me  still.  Oh, 
Heaven,  how  terrible !" 

"So  she  is,"  Hugh  groaned  out,  half  catching  her  in  his 
arms  for  fear  she  should  fall.  "Dead  and  buried,  on  my 
honor,  at  Orfordness,  Winifred!" 

"Hugh,  Hugh!  can  you  never  tell  me  the  truth?"  And 
she  stretched  out  one  thin  white  bony  forefinger  toward 
the  street  beyond.  One  second  she  gasped  a  terrible  gasp ; 
then  she  flung  out  the  words  with  a  last  wild  effort:  "That's 
she!— that's  Elsie!" 


GHOST  OR  WOMAN?  837 

CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 

GHOST  OR  WOMAN? 

Winifred  spoke  with  such  concerted  force  of  inner  con- 
viction that,  absurd  and  incredible  as  he  knew  it  to  be — 
for  had  he  not  seen  Elsie's  own  grave  that  day  at  Orford- 
ness? — Hugh  rushed  over  to  the  window  in  a  fever  of 
sudden  suspense  and  anxiety,  and  gazed  across  the  street 
to  the  exact  spot  where  Winifred's  ghost-like  finger  point- 
ed eagerly  to  some  person  or  thing  on  the  pavement 
opposite.  He  was  almost  too  late,  however,  to  prove  her 
wrong.  As  he  neared  the  window,  he  caught  but  a 
glimpse  of  a  graceful  figure  in  light  half-mourning — like 
Elsie's,  to  be  sure,  in  general  outline,  though  distinctly  a 
trifle  older  and  fuller — disappearing  in  haste  round  the  cor- 
ner by  the  pharmacy. 

The  figure  gave  him  none  the  less  a  shock  of  surprise. 
It  was  certainly  a  very  strange  and  awkward  coincidence. 
He  hadn't  been  in  time  to  catch  the  face,  indeed,  as  Wini- 
fred had  done;  but  the  figure  alone,  the  figure  recalled 
every  trait  of  Elsie's.  How  singular,  after  Winifred  had 
come  to  San  Remo  with  this  profound  belief  in  Elsie's 
living  there,  that  on  the  very  first  day  of  their  stay  in 
the  town  they  should  happen  to  light  by  pure  accident 
upon  a  person  so  closely  recalling  Elsie!  Surely,  surely 
the  stars  in  their  courses  were  fighting  against  him.  War- 
ren Relf  could  not  be  blamed  for  this.  It  was  destiny, 
sheer  adverse  destiny.  Accidental  resemblances  and  hor- 
rid coincidences  were  falling  together  blindly  with  un- 
conscious cunning,  on  purpose,  as  it  were,  to  spite  and 
disconcert  him.  The  laws  of  chance  were  setting  them- 
selves by  the  ears  for  his  special  discomfiture.  No  ordi- 
nary calculation  could  account  for  this.  It  had  in  it  some- 
thing almost  supernatural.  He  glanced  at  Winifred.  She 
stood  triumphant  there — triumphant  but  heart-broken — 
exulting  over  his  defeat  with  one  dying  "I  told  you  so," 
and  chuckling  out  inarticulately  in  her  thin  small  voice, 
with  womanish  persistence:  "That's  she! — that's  Elsie!" 

"It's  very  like  her!"  he  moaned  in  his  agony. 


S38  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

"Very  like  her!"  Winifred  cried  with  a  fresh  burst  of 
unnatural  strength.  "Very  like  her! — Oh,  Hugh,  I  de- 
spise you!  I  tell  you  I  saw  her  face  to  face!  It's  Elsie — 
it's  Elsie!" 

A  picture  sometimes  darts  across  one's  eyes  for  a  brief 
moment,  and  remains  vaguely  photographed  for  a  space 
on  the  retina,  but  uninterpreted  by  the  brain,  till  it  grows, 
as  we  dwell  upon  it  mentally  afterward,  even  clearer  and 
clearer,  and  at  last  with  a  burst  flashes  its  real  significance 
fully  home  to  us  in  a  flood  of  conviction.  As  Hugh  stood 
there,  absorbed,  by  the  half-open  window,  the  picture  he 
had  caught  of  that  slight  lithe  figure  sweeping  round  the 
corner  with  Elsie's  well-known  gait  come  home  to  him 
thus  with  a  sudden  rush  of  indubitable  certainty.  He 
no  longer  hesitated.  He  saw  it  was  so.  He  knew  her 
now!  It  was  Elsie,  Elsie! 

His  brain  reeled  and  whirled  with  the  unexpected 
shock;  the  universe  turned  round  on  him  as  on  a  pivot. 
"Winifred,"  he  cried,  "you're  right!  you're  right!  There 
can't  be  anybody  else  on  earth  so  like  her!  I  don't  know 
how  she's  come  back  to  life!  She's  dead  and  buried  at 
Orfordness!  It's  a  miracle!-  a  miracle!  But  that's  she 
that  we  saw!  I  can't  deny  it.  That's  she! — that's  Elsie!" 

His  hat  lay  thrown  down  on  the  table  by  his  side.  He 
snatched  it  up  in  his  eager  haste  to  follow  and  track  down 
this  mysterious  resemblance.  He  couldn't  let  Elsie's 
double,  her  bodily  simulacrum,  walk  down  the  street  un- 
noticed and  unquestioned.  A  profound  horror  possessed 
his  soul.  A  doubter  by  nature,  he  seemed  to  feel  the 
solid  earth  failing  beneath  his  feet.  He  had  never  before 
in  all  his  life  drawn  so  perilously  close  to  the  very  verge 
and  margin  of  the  unseen  universe.  It  was  Elsie  herself, 
or  else — the  grave  had  yielded  up  its  shadowy  occupant. 

He  rushed  to  the  door,  on  fire  with  his  sense  of  mystery 
and  astonishment.  A  lotyi  laugh  by  his  side  held  him 
back  as  he  went.  He  turned  round.  It  was  Winifred, 
laughing,  choking,  exultant,  hysterical.  She  flung  her- 
self down  on  the  sofa  now,  and  was  catching  her  breath 
in  spasmodic  bursts  with  unnatural  merriment.  That  was 
the  awful  kind  of  laughter  that  bodes  no  good  to  those 
who  laugh  it — hollow,  horrible,  mocking,  delusive.  Hugh 


GHOST  OR  WOMAN?  33d 

saw  at  a  glance  she  was  dangerously  ill.  Her  mirth  was 
the  mirth  of  a  mania,  and  worse.  With  a  burning  soul 
and  a  chafing  heart,  he  turned  back,  as  in  duty  bound, 
to  her  side  again.  He  must  leave  Elsie's  wraith  to  walk 
by  itself,  unexplained  and  uninvestigated,  its  ghostly  way 
down  the  streets  of  San  Remo.  He  had  more  than  enough 
to  do  at  home.  Winifred  was  dying! — dying  of  laughter. 

And  yet  her  laugh  seemed  almost  hilarious.  In  spite 
of  all,  it  had  a  ghastly  ring  of  victory  and  boisterous 
joy  in  it.  "Oh,  Hugh,"  she  cried,  with  little  choking 
chuckles,  in  the  brief  intervals  of  her  spasmodic  peals, 
"you're  too  absurd!  You'll  kill  me!  you'll  kill  me! — I 
can't  help  laughing;  it's  so  ridiculous. — You  tell  me  one 
minute,  with  solemn  oaths  and  ingenious  lies,  you've  seen 
her  grave — you  know  she's  dead  and  buried:  you  pull 
long  faces  till  you  almost  force  me  to  believe  you — you 
positively  cry  and  moan  and  groan  over  her — and  then 
the  next  second,  when  she  passes  the  window  before  my 
very  eyes,  alive  and  well,  and  in  her  right  mind,  you  seize 
your  hat,  you  want  to  rush  out  and  find  her  and  embrace 
her — here,  this  moment,  right  under  my  face — and  leave 
me  alone  to  die  by  myself,  without  one  soul  on  earth  to 
wait  upon  me  or  help  me !"  Her  emotion  supplied  her 
with  words  and  images  above  her  own  level. — "It's  just 
grotesque,"  she  went  on  after  a  pause.  "It's  inhuman  in 
its  absurdity.  Wicked  as  you  are,  and  shameless  as  you 
are,  it's  impossible  for  any  one  to  take  you  seriously. — 
You're  the  living  embodiment  of  a  little,  inconsequent, 
meddling,  muddling,  mischief-making  medieval  demon. 
You're  a  burlesque  Mephistopheles.  You've  got  no  soul, 
and  you've  got  no  feelings.  But  you  make  me  laugh! 
Oh,  you  make  me  laugh!  You've  broken  my  heart;  but 
you'll  be  the  death  of  me.— Puck  and  Don  Juan  rolled  into 
one!— 'Elsie's  dead!— Why,  there's  dear  Elsie!'— It's  too 
incongruous;  it's  too  ridiculous."  And  she  exploded 
once  more  in  a  hideous  semblance  of  laughter. 

Hugh  gazed  at  her  blankly,  sobered  with  alarm.  Was 
she  going  mad?  or  was  he  mad  himself?— that  he  should 
see  visions,  and  meet  dead  Elsie !  Could  it  really  be  Elsie  ? 
He  had  heard  strange  stories  of  appearances  and  sec- 
ond-sight, such  as  mystics  among  us  love  to  dwell  upon; 


340  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

and  in  all  of  them  the  appearances  were  closely  connected 
with  death-bed  scenes.  Could  any  truth  lurk,  after  all, 
in  those  discredited  tales  of  wraiths  and  visions?  Could 
Elsie's  ghost  have  come  from  the  grave  to  prepare  him 
betimes  for  Winifred's  funeral?  Or  did  Winifred's  dying 
mind,  by  some  strange  alchemy,  project,  as  it  were,  an 
image  of  Elsie,  who  filled  her  soul,  on  to  his  own  eye 
and  brain,  as  he  sat  there  beside  her? 

He  brushed  away  these  metaphysical  cobwebs  with  a 
dash  of  his  hand.  Fool  that  he  was  to  be  led  away  thus 
by  a  mere  accidental  coincidence  or  resemblance !  He  was 
tired  with  sleeplessness;  emotion  had  unmanned  him. 

Winifred's  laugh  dissolved  itself  into  tears.  She  broke 
down  now,  hysterically,  utterly.  She  sobbed  and  moaned 
in  agony  on  the  sofa.  Deep  sighs  and  loud  laughter  al- 
ternated horribly  in  her  storm  of  emotion.  The  worst 
had  come.  She  was  dangerously  ill.  Hugh  feared  in 
his  heart  she  was  on  the  point  of  dying. 

"Go!'!  she  burst  out,  in  one  spasmodic  effort,  thrusting 
him  away  from  her  side  with  the  palm  of  her  hand.  "I 
don't  want  you  here.  Go — go — to  Elsie!  I  can  die  now. 
I've  found  you  all  out.  You're  both  of  you  alike;  you've 
both  of  you  deceived  me." 

Hugh  rang  the  bell  wildly  for  the  Swiss  waiter.  "Send 
the  chambermaid!"  he  cried  in  his  broken  Italian.  "The 
patroness!  A  lady!  The  signora  is  ill.  No  time  to  be 
lost.  I  must  run  at  once  and  find  the  English  doctor." 

When  Winifred  looked  around  her  again,  she  found 
two  or  three  strange  faces  crowded  beside  the  bed  on 
which  they  had  laid  her,  and  a  fresh  young  Italian  girl, 
the  landlady's  daughter,  holding  her  head  and  bathing 
her  brows  with  that  universal  specific,  orange-flower 
water.  The  faint  perfume  revived  her  a  little.  The  land- 
lady's daughter  was  a  comely  girl,  with  sympathetic  eyes, 
and  she  smiled  the  winsome  Italian  smile  as  the  poor  pale 
child  opened  her  lids  and  looked  vaguely  up  at  her. 
"Don't  cry,  signorina,"  she  said  soothingly  Then  her 
glance  fell,  woman-like,  upon  the  plain  gold  ring  on  Wini- 
fred's thin  and  wasted  fourth  finger,  and  she  corrected 
herself  half  unconsciously:  "Don't  cry,  signora.  Your 


GHOST   OR  WOMAN?  341 

husband  will  soon  be  back  by  your  side:   he's  gone  to 
fetch  the  English  doctor." 

"I  don't  want  him,"  Winifred  cried,  with  intense  yearn- 
ing, in  her  boarding-school  French,  for  she  knew  barely 
enough  Italian  to  understand  her  new  little  friend.  "I 
don't  want  my  husband;  I  want  Elsie.  Keep  him  away 
from  me — keep  him  away,  I  pray. — Hold  my  hand  your- 
self, and  send  away  my  husband!  Je  ne  1'aime  pas,  cet 
hommela!"  And  she  burst  once  more  into  a  discordant 
peal  of  hysterical  laughter. 

"The  poor  signora!"  the  girl  murmured,  with  wide 
open  eyes,  to  the  others  around.  "Her  husband  is  cruel. 
Ah,  wicked  wretch!  Hear  what  she  says!  She  says  she 
doesn't  want  any  more  to  see  him.  She  wants  her  sister!" 

As  she  spoke,  a  white  face  appeared  suddenly  at  the 
door — a  bearded  man's  face,  silent  and  sympathetic.  War- 
ren Relf  had  heard  the  commotion  downstairs,  from  his 
room  above,  and  had  seen  Massinger  run  in  hot  haste 
for  the  doctor.  He  had  come  down  now  with  eager  in- 
quiry for  poor  wasted  Winifred,  whose  face  and  figure 
had  impressed  him  much  as  he  saw  her  borne  out  by  the 
porters  at  the  railway  station. 

"Is  the  signora  very  ill?"  he  asked  in  a  low  voice  of  the 
nearest  woman.  "She  speaks  no  Italian,  I  fear.  Can  I  be 
of  any  use  to  her?" 

"Ecco!  'tis  Signor  Relf,  the  English  artist!"  the  woman 
cried,  in  surprise;  for  all  San  Remo  knew  Warren  well 
as  an  old  inhabitant. — "Come  in,  signor,"  she  continued, 
with  Italian  frankness — for  bedrooms  in  Italy  are  less 
sacred  than  in  England.  "You  know  the  signora?  She 
is  ill — very  ill:  she  is  faint — she  is  dying." 

At  the  name,  Winifred  turned  her  eyes  languidly  to  the 
door,  and  raised  herself,  still  dressed  in  her  traveling 
dress,  on  her  elbows  on  the  bed.  She  yearned  for  sym- 
pathy. If  only  she  could  fling  herself  on  Elsie's  shoulder! 
Elsie,  who  had  wronged  her,  would  at  least  pity  her. 
"Mr.  Relf,"  she  cried,  too  weak  to  be  surprised,  but  glad 
to  welcome  a  fellow-countryman  and  acquaintance  among 
so  many  strangers — and  with  Hugh  himself  worse  than 
a  stranger — "I'm  going  to  die.  But  I  want  to  speak  to 


342  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

you.  You  know  the  truth.  Tell  me  about  Elsie.  Why 
did  Elsie  Challoner  deceive  me?" 

"Deceive  you!"  Warren  answered,  drawing  nearer  in  his 
horror.  "She  didn't  deceive  you.  She  couldn't  deceive 
you.  She  only  wished  to  spare  your  heart  from  suffering 
al1.  her  own  heart  had  suffered.  Elsie  could  never  deceive 
any  one." 

"But  why  did  she  write  to  say  she  was  in  Australia, 
when  she  was  really  living  here  in  San  Remo?"  Winifred 
asked  piteously.  "And  why  did  she  keep  up  a  corres- 
pondence with  my  husband?" 

"Write  she  was  in  Australia!  She  never  wrote,"  War- 
ren cried  in  haste,  seizing  the  poor  dying  girl's  thin  hand 
in  his. — "Mrs.  Massinger,  this  is  no  time  to  conceal  any- 
thing. I  dare  not  speak  to  you  against  your  husband, 
but  still — " 

"I  hate  him!"  Winifred  gasped  out,  with  concentrated 
loathing.  "He  has  done  nothing  since  I  knew  him  but 
lie  to  me  and  deceive  me.  Don't  mind  speaking  ill  of 
him;  I  don't  object  to  that.  What  kills  me  is  that  Elsie 
has  helped  him!  Elsie  has  helped  him!" 

"Elsie  has  not,"  Warren  answered,  lifting  up  her  white 
little  hand  to  his  lips  and  kissing  it  respectfully.  "Elsie 
and  I  are  very  close  friends.  Elsie  has  always  loved  you 
dearly.  If  she's  hidden  anything  from  you,  she  hid  it  for 
your  own  sake  alone. — It  was  Hugh  Massinger  who 
forged  those  letters. — I  can't  let  you  die  thinking  ill  of 
Elsie.  Elsie  has  never,  never  written  to  him. — I  know  it 
all. — I'll  tell  you  the  truth.  Your  husband  thought  she 
was  drowned  at  Whitestrand!" 

"Then  Hugh  doesn't  know  she's  living  here?"  Winifred 
cried  eagerly. 

Warren  Relf  hardly  knew  how  to  answer  her  in  this 
unexpected  crisis.  It  was  a  terrible  moment.  He  couldn't 
expose  Elsie  to  the  chance  of  meeting  Hugh  face  to  face. 
The  shock  and  strain,  he  knew,  would  be  hard  for  her 
to  bear.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  he  couldn't  let  that  poor 
broken-hearted  little  woman  die  with  this  fearful  load  of 
misery  unlightened  on  her  bosom.  The  truth  was  best. 
The  truth  is  always  safest.  "Hugh  doesn't  know  she's 
living  here,"  he  answered  slowly.  "But  if  I  could  onlv  be 


GHOST  OR  WOMAN?  343 

sure  that  Hugh  and  she  would  not  meet,  I'd  bring  her 
round,  before  she  leaves  San  Remo,  this  very  day,  and 
let  you  hear  from  her  own  lips,  beyond  dispute,  her  true 
story." 

Winifred  clenched  her  thin  hands  hard  and  tight.  "He 
shall  never  enter  this  room  again,"  she  whispered  hoarse- 
ly, "till  he  enters  it  to  see  me  laid  out  for  burial." 

Warren  Relf  drew  back,  horrified  at  her  unnatural  stern- 
ness. "Oh  no,"  he  cried.  "Mrs.  Massinger — you  don't 
mean  that :  remember,  he's  your  husband." 

"He  never  was  my  husband,"  Winifred  answered  with 
a  fresh  burst  of  her  feverish  energy.  "He  was  Elsie's  hus- 
band—Elsie's at  heart.  He  loved  Elsie.  He  never  mar- 
ried me  myself  at  all;  he  married  only  the  manor  of 
Whitestrand. — He  shall  never  come  near  me  again  while 
I  live. — I  shall  hold  him  off.  I'm  a  weak  woman;  but 
I've  strength  enough  and  will  enough  left  for  that. — I 
shall  keep  him  at  arm's  length  as  long  as  I  live. — Don't 
be  afraid.  Bring  Elsie  here;  I  want  to  see  her.  I  should 
die  happy  if  only  I  knew  that  Elsie  hadn't  helped  that 
man  to  deceive  me." 

Meanwhile,  Hugh  Massinger  was  hurrying  along  on  his 
way  to  the  English  doctor's,  saying  to  himself  a  thousand 
times  over:  "I  don't  care  how  much  she  thinks  ill  of  me; 
but  I  can't  endure  she  should  die  thinking  ill  of  poor  dead 
Elsie.  If  only  I  could  make  her  believe  me  in  that.  If 
only  she  knew  that  Elsie  was  true  to  her,  that  poor  dead 
Elsie  had  never  deceived  her!"  He  had  so  much  chivalry, 
so  much  earnestness,  so  much  of  devotion,  still  left  in  him. 
But  he  thought  most  of  poor  dead  Elsie,  not  at  all  of 
poor  deceived  and  dying  Winifred.  For  he  no  longer 
believed  it  was  really  Elsie  he  had  seen  in  the  street:  the 
delusion  had  come  and  gone  in  a  flash.  How  could  it  be 
Elsie?  Such  sights  are  impossible.  He  was  no  dreamer 
of  dreams  or  seer  of  visions.  Elsie  was  dead  and  buried 
at  Orfordness,  and  this  other  figure — was  only,  after  all, 
very,  very  like  her. 


344  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

CHAPTER  XXXIX. 
AFTER  LONG  GRIEF  AND  PAIN. 

The  time  to  stand  upon  trifles  was  past.  Let  him  run  the 
risk  of  meeting  Massinger  by  the  way  or  not,  Warren  Relf 
must  needs  go  round  and  fetch  Elsie  to  comfort  and  con- 
sole poor  dying  Winifred.  He  hastened  away  at  the  top 
of  his  speed  to  the  Villa  Rossa.  At  the  door,  both  girls 
together  met  him.  Elsie  had  just  returned,  basket  in 
hand,  from  the  Avenue  Vittorio-Emmanuele,  and  had 
learned  from  Edie  so  much  of  the  contents  of  Warren's 
hasty  letter  as  had  been  intended  from  the  first  for  her 
edification. 

Warren  hadn't  meant  to  let  Elsie  know  that  Hugh  and 
Winifred  had  come  to  San  Remo ;  or,  at  any  rate,  not  im- 
mediately. He  wished  rather  to  break  it  by  gradual 
stages,  and  to  prepare  her  mind  as  quietly  as  possible  for 
a  hasty  return  home  to  England.  But  the  sight  of  poor 
Winifred's  dying  misery  and  distress  had  put  all  that  on 
a  different  footing.  Even  though  it  cost  Elsie  a  bitter 
wrench,  he  must  take  her  round  at  all  costs  to  see  Winifred. 
He  kissed  his  sister,  a  mechanical  kiss;  then  he  turned 
round,  and,  half  by  accident,  half  by  design,  for  the  first 
time  in  his  life  he  kissed  Elsie  too,  like  one  who  hardly 
knows  he  does  it.  Elsie  drew  back,  a  trifle  surprised,  but 
did  not  resent,  the  unexpected  freedom.  After  all,  one 
may  always  kiss  one's  brother;  and  she  and  Warren  were 
brother  and  sister. — Did  it  run  in  the  family,  peradventure, 
that  false  logic  of  love?  Was  Elsie  now  deceiving  herself 
with  the  self-same  plea  as  that  with  which  Hugh  had  once 
in  his  turn  deceived  her? 

Warren  drew  her  aside  gently  into  the  tiny  salon,  and 
motioned  to  Edie  not  to  follow  them.  Elsie's  heart  beat 
high  with  wonder.  She  was  aware  how  much  it  made 
her  pulse  quicken  to  see  Warren  again — with  something 
more  than  the  mere  fraternal  greeting  she  pretended. 
Her  little  self-deception  broke  down  at  last:  she  knew  she 
loved  him — in  an  unpractical  way;  and  she  was  almost 
sorry  she  could  never,  never  make  him  happy. 

But  Warren's  grave  face  bade  her  heart  stand  still  for  a 


AFTER   LONG   GRIEF   AND   PAIN.  345 

beat  or  two  next  moment.  He  had  clearly  something 
most  serious  to  communicate — something  that  he  knew 
would  profoundly  distress  her.  A  womanly  alarm  came 
over  her  with  a  vague  surmise.  Could  Warren  be  going 
to  tell  her — ?  Oh,  no!  Impossible.  She  knew  dear  War- 
ren too  well  for  that!  he  at  least  could  never  be  cruel. 

If  W'arren  was  going  to  tell  her  that,  her  faith  in  her 
kind  would  die  out  forever.  And  then,  she  almost  smiled 
to  herself  at  her  own  frank  and  feminine  inconsistency. 
She,  who  could  never  love  again! — she,  who  had  always 
scrupulously  told  him  she  cared  for  him  only  as  a  sister 
for  a  brother !— she,  who  wanted  him  to  marry  "some  nice 
girl,  who  would  make  him  happy."  She  recognized  now 
that  if  that  "nice  girl"  had  in  reality  floated  across  Warren 
Relf's  spiritual  horizon,  her  life  would  again  be  left  unto 
her  desolate.  It  flashed  across  her  mind  with  vivid  dis- 
tinctness, in  that  moment  of  painful  doubt  and  uncertain- 
ty, that  after  all  she  really  loved  him! — beyond  shadow 
of  question,  she  really  loved  him! 

"Well,  Warren?"  she  asked  with  tremulous  eagerness, 
drawing  closer  up  to  him  in  her  sweet  womanly  con- 
fidence, and  gazing  into  his  eyes,  half  afraid,  half  affection- 
ate. How  could  she  ever  have  doubted  him,  were  it  only 
fora  second? 

"Elsie,"  Warren  cried,  laying  his  hand  with  unspoken 
tenderness  on  her  shapely  shoulder,  "I  want  you  to  come 
round  at  once  to  the  pension  on  the  piazza. — It's  better 
to  tell  it  all  out  at  once.  Winifred  Massinger's  come  to 
San  Remo,  very  ill — dying,  I  fear.  She  knows  you're 
here,  and  she's  asked  to  see  you." 

Elsie's  face  grew  red  and  then  white  for  a  moment,  and 
she  trembled  visibly.  "Is  he  there?"  she  asked,  after  a 
short  pause.  Then,  with  a  sudden  burst  of  uncontrolla- 
ble tears,  she  buried  her  face  in  her  hands  on  the  table. 

Warren  soothed  her  with  his  hand  tenderly,  and,  lean- 
ing over  her,  told  her,  in  haste  and  in  a  very  low  voice, 
the  whole  sad  story.  "I  don't  think  he'll  be  there,"  he 
added  at  the  end.  "Mrs.  Massinger  said  she  wouldn't 
allow  him  to  enter  the  room.  But  in  any  case — for  that 
poor  girl's  sake— you  won't  refuse  to  go  to  her  now,  will 
you,  Elsie?" 


346  THIS  MORTAL,  C  OIL. 

"No,"  Elsie  answered,  rising  calmly  with  womanly  dig- 
nity, to  face  it  all  out  "I  must  go.  It  would  be  cruel  and 
wicked  of  course  to  shirk  it.  For  Winifred's  sake,  I'll  go 
in  any  case. — But,  Warren,  before  I  dare  to  go — "  She 
broke  off  suddenly,  and  with  a  woman's  impulse  held  up 
her  pale  face  to  him  in  mute  submission. 

A  thrill  coursed  down  through  Warren  Relf's  nerves; 
he  stooped  down  and  pressed  his  lips  fervently  to  hers. 
"Before  you  go,  you  are  mine  then,  Elsie!"  he  cried 
eagerly. 

Elsie  pressed  his  hand  faintly  in  reply.  "I  am  yours, 
Warren,"  she  answered  at  last  very  low,  after  a  short 
pause.  "But  I  can't  be  yours  as  you  wish  it  for  a  long 
time  yet.  No  matter  why.  I  shall  be  yours  in  heart. — 
I  couldn't  have  gone  on  any  other  terms.  And  with  that, 
I  think,  I  can  go  and  face  it." 

At  the  pension,  Hugh  had  already  brought  the  English 
doctor,  who  went  in  alone  to  look  after  Winifred.  Hugh 
had  tried  to  accompany  him  into  the  bedroom!  but  Wini- 
fred, true  to  her  terrible  threat,  lifted  one  stern  forefinger 
before  his  swimming  eyes  and  cried  out  "Never!"  in  a 
voice  so  doggedly  determined  that  Hugh  slank  away 
abashed  into  the  anteroom. 

The  English  doctor  stopped  for  several  minutes  in  con- 
sultation, and  Winifred  spoke  to  him,  simply  and  unre- 
servedly, about  her  husband.  "Send  that  man  away!"  she 
cried,  pointing  to  Hugh,  as  he  stood  still  peering  across 
from  the  gloom  of  the  doorway.  "I  won't  have  him  in 
here  to  see  me  die !  I  won't  have  him  in  here !  It  makes 
me  worse  to  see  him  about  the  place.  I  hate  him! — I 
hate  him !" 

"You'd  better  go,"  the  doctor  whispered  softly,  looking 
him  hard  in  the  face  with  his  inquiring  eyes.  "She's  in  a 
very  excited  hysterical  condition.  She's  best  alone,  with 
only  the  women. — A  husband's  presence  often  does  more 
harm  than  good  in  such  nervous  crises.  Nobody  should 
be  near  to  increase  her  excitement. — Have  the  kindness 
to  shut  the  door,  if  you  please.  You  needn't  come  back 
for  the  present,  thank  you." 

And  then  Winifred  unburdened  once  more  her  poor 


AFTER  LONG  GRIEF  AND  PAIN.  347 

laden  soul  in  convulsive  sobs.  "I 'want  to  see  Elsie!  I 
want  to  see  Elsie!" 

"Miss  Challoner?"  the  doctor  asked  suggestively.  He 
knew  her  well  as  the  tenderest  and  best  of  amateur  nurses. 

Winifred  explained  to  him  with  broken  little  cries  and 
eager  words  that  she  wished  to  see  Elsie  in  Hugh's  ab- 
sence. 

At  the  end  of  five  minutes'  soothing  talk,  the  doctor 
read  it  all  to  the  very  bottom  with  professional  acuteness. 
The  poor  girl  was  dying.  Her  husband  and  she  had  never 
got  on.  She  hungered  and  thirsted  for  human  sympathy. 
Why  not  gratify  her  yearning  little  soul?  He  stepped 
back  into  the  bare  and  dingily  lighted  sitting-room.  "I 
think,"  he  said  persuasively  to  Hugh,  with  authoritative 
suggestion,  "your  wife  would  be  all  the  better  in  the  end 
if  she  were  left  entirely  alone  with  the  womenkind  for  a 
little.  Your  presence  here  evidently  disturbs  and  excites 
her.  Her  condition's  critical,  distinctly  critical.  I  won't 
conceal  it  from  you.  She's  overfatigued  with  the  journey 
and  with  mental  exhaustion.  The  slightest  aggravation 
of  the  hysterical  symptoms  might  carry  her  off  at  any  mo- 
ment. If  I  were  you,  I'd  stroll  out  for  an  hour.  Lounge 
along  by  the  shore  or  up  the  hills  a  bit.  I'll  stop  and  look 
after  her.  She's  quieter  now.  You  needn't  come  back  for 
at  least  an  hour." 

Hugh  knew  in  his  heart  it  was  best  so.  Winifred  hated 
him,  not  without  cause.  He  took  up  his  hat,  crushed  it 
fiercely  on  his  head,  and,  strolling  down  by  himself  to 
the  water's  edge,  sat  in  the  listless  calm  of  utter  despair  on 
a  bare  bench  in  the  cool  fresh  air  of  an  Italian  evening. 
He  thought  in  a  hopeless,  helpless,  irresponsible  way 
about  poor  dead  Elsie  and  poor  dying  Winifred. 

Five  minutes  after  Hugh  had  left  the  pension,  Warren 
Relf  and  Elsie  mounted  the  big  center  staircase  and 
knocked  at  the  door  of  Winifred's  bare  and  dingy  salon. 
The  patron  had  already  informed  them  that  the  signor  was 
gone  out,  and  that  the  signora  was  up  in  her  room  alone 
with  the  women  of  the  hotel  and  the  English  doctor. 

Warren  Relf  remained  by  himself  in  the  ante-room. 
Elsie  went  in  unannounced  to  Winifred. 


348  THIS  MORTAL,  C  OIL. 

Oh,  the  joy  and  relief  of  that  final  meeting!  The  poor 
dying  girl  rose  up  on  the  bed  with  a  bound  to  greet  her. 
A  sudden  flush  crimsoned  her  sunken  cheeks.  As  her 
eyes  rested  once  more  upon  Elsie's  face — that  earnest, 
serious,  beautiful  face  she  had  loved  and  trusted — every 
shadow  of  fear  and  misery  faded  from  her  look,  and  she 
cried  aloud  in  a  fever  of  delight:  "Oh,  Elsie,  Elsie,  I'm 
glad  you've  come.  I'm  glad  to  hold  your  hand  in  mine 
again;  now  I  can  die  happy!" 

Elsie  saw  at  a  glance  that  she  spoke  the  truth.  That 
bright  red  spot  in  the  center  of  each  wan  and  pallid  cheek 
told  its  own  sad  tale  with  unmistakable  eloquence.  She 
flung  her  arms  fervently  round  her  feeble  little  friend. 
"Winnie,  Winnie!"  she  cried — "my  own  sweet  Winnie! 
Why  didn't  you  let  me  know  before?  If  I'd  thought  you 
were  like  this,  I'd  have  come  to  you  long  ago !" 

"Then  you  love  me  still?"  Winifred  murmured  low, 
clinging  tight  and  hard  to  her  recovered  friend  with  a 
feverish  longing. 

"I've  always  loved  you;  I  shall  always  love  you,"  Elsie 
answered  softly.  "My  love  doesn't  come  and  go,  Winnie. 
If  I  hadn't  loved  you  more  than  I  can  say,  I'd  have  come 
long  since.  It  was  for  your  own  sake  I  kept  so  long 
away  from  you." 

The  English  doctor  rose  with  a  sign  from  the  chair  by 
the  bedside  and  motioned  the  women  out  of  the  room. — 
"We'll  leave  you  alone,"  he  said  in  a  quiet  voice  to  Elsie. — 
"Don't  excite  her  too  much,  if  you  please,  Miss  Challoner. 
But  I  know  I  can  trust  you.  I  leave  her  in  the  very  best 
of  hands.  You  can  only  be  soothing  and  restful  any- 
where." 

The  doctor's  confidence  was  perhaps  ill-advised.  As 
soon  as  those  two  were  left  by  themselves — the  two  women 
who  had  loved  Hugh  Massinger  best  in  the  world,  and 
whom  Hugh  Massinger  had  so  deeply  wronged  and  so 
cruelly  injured — they  fell  upon  one  another's  necks  with  a 
great  cry,  and  wept,  and  caressed  one  another  long  in 
silence.  Then  Winifred,  leaning  back  in  fatigue,  said 
with  a  sudden  burst:  "Oh,  Elsie,  Elsie!  I  can't  die  now 
without  confessing  it,  all,  every  word  to  you:  once,  do 
you  know — more  than  once  I  distrusted  you!" 


AFTER   LONG   GRIEF   AND   PAIN.  349 

"I  know,  my  darling,"  Elsie  answered  with  a  tearful 
imile,  kissing  her  pale  white  fingers  many  times  tenderly. 
"I  know,  I  understand.  You  couldn't  help  it.  You 
needn't  explain.  It  was  no  wonder." 

Winifred  gazed  at  her  transparent  eyes  and  truthful 
face.  No  one  who  saw  them  could  ever  distrust  them,  at 
least  while  he  looked  at  them.  "Elsie,"  she  said,  gripping 
her  tight  in  her  grasp — the  one  being  on  earth  who  could 
tiuly  sympathize  with  her — "I'll  tell  you  why:  he  kept 
your  letters  all  in  a  box — your  letters  and  the  little  gold 
watch  he  gave  you." 

"No,  not  the  watch,  darling,"  Elsie  answered,  starting 
back. — "Winnie,  I'll  tell  you  what  I  did  with  that  watch: 
I  threw  it  into  the  sea  off  the  pier  at  Lowestoft." 

A  light  broke  suddenly  over  Winifred's  mind;  she 
knew  now  Hugh  had  told  her  the  truth  for  once.  "He 
picked  it  up  at  Orfordness,"  she  mused  simply.  "It  was 
carried  there  by  the  tide  with  a  woman's  body — a  body 
that  he  took  for  yours,  Elsie." 

"He  doesn't  know  I'm  alive  even  now,  dearest,"  Elsie 
whispered  by  her  side.  "I  hope  while  I  live  he  may  never 
know  it;  though  I  don't  know  now  how  we're  to  keep 
it  from  him,  I  confess,  much  longer." 

Then  Winifred,  emboldened  by  Elsie's  hand,  poured  out 
her  full  grief  in  her  friend's  ear,  and  told  Elsie  the  tale 
of  her  long,  long  sorrow.  Elsie  listened  with  a  burning 
cheek.  "If  only  I'd  known!"  she  cried  at  last.  "If  only 
I'd  known  all  this  ever  so  much  sooner!  But  I  didn't  want 
to  come  between  you  two.  I  thought  perhaps  I  would 
spoil  all :  I  fancied  you  were  happy  with  one  another." 

"And  after  I'm  dead,  Elsie,  will  you — see  him?" 

Elsie   started.     "Never,  darling,"  she  cried.    "Never, 


never: 


"Then  you  don't  love  him  any  longer,  dear?" 
"Love  him?  Oh,  no!  That's  all  dead  and  buried  long 
ago.  I  mourned  too  many  months  for  my  dead  love, 
Winifred;  but  after  the  way  Hugh's  treated  you — how 
could  I  love  him?  how  could' I  help  feeling  harshly  toward 
him?" 

Winifred  pressed  her  friend  in  her  arms  harder  than 
ever.     "Oh,  Elsie!"  she  cried,  "I  love  you  better  than 


350  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

anybody  else  in  the  whole  world.  I  wish  I'd  had  you 
always  with  me.  If  you'd  been  near,  I  might  have  been 
happier.  How  on  earth  could  I  ever  have  ventured  to 
mistrust  you!" 

They  talked  long  and  low  in  their  confidences  to  one 
another,  each  pouring  out  her  whole  arrears  of  time,  and 
each  understanding  for  the  first  moment  many  things  that 
had  long  been  strangely  obscure  to  them.  At  last  Wini- 
fred repeated  the  tale  of  her  two  or  three  late  stormy  in- 
terviews with  her  husband.  She  told  them  truthfully,  just 
as  they  occurred — extenuating  nothing  on  either  side — 
down  to  the  very  words  she  had  used  to  Hugh :  "You've 
tried  to  murder  me  by  slow  torture,  that  you  might  marry 
Elsie:"  and  that  other  terrible  sentence  she  had  spoken 
out  that  very  evening  to  Warren:  "He  shall  not  enter  this 
room  again  till  he  enters  it  to  see  me  laid  out  for  burial." 

Elsie  shuddered  with  unspeakable  awe  and  horror  when 
that  frail  young  girl,  so  delicate  of  mold  and  so  graceful 
of  feature  even  still,  uttered  those  awful  words  of  vindic- 
tive rancor  against  the  man  she  had  pledged  her  troth 
to  love  and  to  honor.  "Oh,  Winifred!"  she  cried,  looking 
down  at  her  with  mingled  pity  and  terror  traced  in  every 
line  of  her  compassionate  face,  "you  didn't  say  that !  You 
could  never  have  meant  it!" 

Winifred  clenched  her  white  hands  yet  harder  once 
more.  "Yes,  I  did,"  she  cried.  "I  meant  it,  and  I  mean 
it.  He's  hounded  me  to  death ;  and  now  that  I'm  dying, 
he  shan't  gloat  over  me !" 

"Winnie,  Winnie,  he's  your  husband,  your  husband! 
Remember  what  you  promised  to  do  when  you  married 
him." 

"That's  just  what  Mr.  Relf  said  to  me  this  afternoon,'' 
Winifred  cried  excitedly.  "And  I  answered  him  back: 
'He  never  was  a  husband  of  mine  at  all.  He  was  Elsie's 
husband.  He  loved  Elsie.  He  never  married  me:  he 
only  married  the  manor  of  Whitestrand.  He  shan't  come 
near  me  again  while  I  live.  I  only  want  to  know  before 
I  die  that  Elsie  never  helped  that  wretch  to  deceive  me!' " 

"And  you  know  that  now,  darling!" 

"Elsie,  Elsie,  I  know  it!  Forgive  me."  She  stretched  out 
her  arms  with  an  appealing  glance. 


AFTER  LONG   GRIEF  AND  PAIN.  861 

Elsie  stooped  down  and  kissed  her  once  more.  "Win- 
nie," she  pleaded  in  a  low  soft  voice,  "he's  your  husband, 
after  all.  Don't  feel  so  bitterly  to  him.  I  know  he's 
wronged  you;  I  know  he's  blighted  your  dear  life  for  you; 
1  can  see  how  he's  crushed  your  very  soul  out  by  his  cold- 
ness and  his  cruelty,  and  his  pride  and  his  sternness.  But 
for  all  that,  I  can't  bear  to  hear  you  say  you'll  die  in  anger 
— die,  and  leave  him  behind  unforgiven.  Oh,  for  my  sake, 
and  for  your  own  sake,  Winnie,  if  not  for  his — do  see  him 
and  speak  to  him,  just  once,  forgivingly." 

"Never!"  Winifred  answered,  starting  up  on  the  bed 
once  more  with  a  ghastly  energy.  "He's  driven  me  to 
the  grave:  let  him  have  his  punishment!" 

Elsie  drew  back,  more  horrified  than  ever.  Her  face 
spoke  better  than  her  words  to  Winifred.  "My  darling," 
she  cried,  "you  must  see  him.  You  must  never  die  and 
leave  him  so."  Then  in  a  gentler  voice  she  added  implor- 
ingly: "Forgive  us  our  trespasses,  as  we  forgive  them 
that  trespass  against  us." 

Winifred  buried  her  face  wildly  in  her  bloodless  hands. 
"I  can't,"  she  moaned  out;  "I  haven't  the  power.  It's  too 
late  now.  He's  been  too  cruel  to  me." 

For  many  minutes  together  Elsie  bent  tenderly  over 
her,  whispering  words  of  consolation  and  comfort  in  her 
ears,  while  Winifred  listened  and  cried  silently.  At  last, 
after  Elsie  had  soothed  her  long,  and  wept  over  her  much 
with  soft  loving  touches,  Winifred  looked  up  in  her  face 
with  a  wistful  gaze.  "I  think,  Elsie,"  she  said  slowly,  "I 
could  bear  to  see  him,  if  you  would  stop  with  me  here 
and  help  me." 

Elsie  shrank  into  herself  with  a  sudden  horror.  That 
would  be  a  crucial  trial,  indeed,  of  her  own  forgiveness 
for  the  man  who  had  wronged  her,  and  her  own  affection 
for  poor  dying  Winifred.  Meet  Hugh  again,  so  painfully, 
so  unexpectedly!  Come  back  to  him  at  once,  from  the 
tomb,  as  it  were,  to  remind  him  of  his  crime,  and  before 
Winifred's  eyes — poor  dying  Winifred's!  The  very  idea 
made  her  shudder  with  alarm.  "Oh,  Winnie,"  she  cried, 
looking  down  upon  her  friend  with  her  great  gray  eyes, 
"I  couldn't  face  him.  I  thought  I  should  never  see  him 
again.  I  daren't  do  it.  You  mustn't  ask  me." 


352  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

"Then  you  haven't  forgiven  him  yourself!"  Winifred 
burst  out  eagerly.  "You  love  him  still !  You  love  him — 
and  you  hate  him! — Elsie,  that's  just  the  same  as  me.  I 
hate  him — but  I  love  him ;  oh !  how  I  do  love  him !" 

She  spoke  no  more  than  the  simple  truth.  She  was 
judging  Elsie  by  her  own  heart.  With  that  strange 
womanly  paradox  we  so  often  see,  she  loved  her  husband 
even  now,  much  as  she  hated  him.  It  was  that  indeed 
that  made  her  hate  him  so  much ;  her  love  gave  point  to 
her  hatred  and  her  jealousy. 

"No,  darling,"  Elsie  answered,  bending  over  her  closer 
and  speaking  lower  in  her  ear  than  she  had  yet  spoken. 
"I  don't  love  him;  and  I  don't  hate  him.  I  forgive  him 
all!  I've  forgiven  him  long  ago. — Winnie,  I  love  some 
one  else  now.  I've  given  my  heart  away  at  last,  and  I've 
given  it  to  a  better  man  than  Hugh  Massinger." 

'Then  why  won't  you  wait  and  help  me  to  see  him?" 
Winifred  cried  once  more  in  her  fiery  energy. 

"Because — I'm  ashamed.  I  can't  look  him  in  the  face; 
that's  all,  Winnie." 

Winifred  clung  to  her  like  a  frightened  child  to  its 
mother's  skirts.  "Elsie,"  she  burst  out,  with  childish  ve- 
hemence, "stop  with  me  now  to  the  end!  Don't  ever 
leave  me!" 

Elsie's  heart  sank  deep  into  her  bosom.  A  horrible 
dread  possessed  her  soul.  She  saw  one  ghastly  possibility 
looming  before  them  that  Winifred  never  seemed  to  rec- 
ognize. Hugh  kept  her  letters,  her  watch,  her  relics. 
Suppose  he  should  come  and — recognizing  her  at  once, 
betray  his  surviving  passion  for  herself  before  poor  dying 
Winifred!  She  dared  hardly  face  so  hideous  a  chance. 
And  yet,  she  couldn't  bear  to  untwine  herself  from  Wini- 
fred's arms,  that  clung  so  tight  and  so  tenderly  around 
her.  There  was  no  time  to  lose,  however:  she  must  make 
up  her  mind.  "Winifred,"  she  murmured,  laying  her 
head  close  down  by  the  dying  girl's,  "I'll  do  as  you  say. 
I'll  stop  here  still.  I'll  see  Hugh.  As  long  as  you  live, 
I'll  never  leave  you!" 

Winifred  loosed  her  arms  one  moment  again,  and  then 
flung  them  in  a  fresh  access  of  feverish  fervor  round  her 
recovered  friend — her  dear  beautiful  Elsie.  "You'll  stop 


AT  REST  AT  LAST.  353 

here,"  she  cried  through  her  sobs  and  tears;  "you'll  help 
me  to  tell  Hugh  I  forgive  him." 

"I'll  stop  here,"   Elsie  answered  low,  "and   I'll  help 
you  to  forgive  him." 


CHAPTER  XL. 

AT  REST  AT  LAST. 

Winifred  fell  back  on  the  pillows  wearily.  "I  love  him," 
she  whispered  once  more.  "He  hates  me,  Elsie;  but  in 
spite  of  all,  I  love  him,  I  love  him." 

For  years  she  had  locked  up  that  secret  in  her  own 
soul.  She  had  told  it  to  no  one,  least  of  all  to  her  husband. 
But,  confined  to  the  narrow  space  of  her  poor  small  heart, 
and  battlirfg  there  with  her  contempt  and  scorn,  it  had 
slowly  eaten  her  very  life  out.  Hating  and  despising  him 
for  his  crooked  ways,  she  loved  him  still,  for  her  old  love's 
sake:  with  a  woman's  singleness  of  heart  and  purpose, 
she  throned  him  in  her  love,  supreme  and  solitary.  And 
the  secret  at  last  had  framed  itself  into  words  and  confided 
itself  almost  against  her  will  to  Elsie. 

Her  face  was  growing  very  pale  now.  After  all  this 
excitement,  she  needed  rest.  The  inevitable  reaction  was 
beginning  to  set  in.  She  fumbled  with  her  fingers  on  the 
bedclothes  nervously;  her  face  twitched  with  a  painful 
twitching.  The  symptoms  alarmed  and  frightened  Elsie; 
she  opened  the  door  of  the  little  salon  and  signaled  to  the 
English  doctor  to  return  to  the  bedroom.  He  came  in, 
and  cast  a1  keen  glance  at  the  bed.  Elsie  looked  up  at  him 
with  inquiring  eyes.  The  doctor  nodded  gravely  and 
drew  his  long  beard  through  his  closed  hand.  "A  mere 
question  of  hours,"  he  whispered  in  her  ear.  "It  may  be 
delayed;  it  may  come  at  any  time.  She's  overtaxed  her 
strength.  Hysteria,  followed  by  proportionate  prostra- 
tion. Her  heart  may  fail  from  moment  to  moment." 

"Where's  her  husband?"  Elsie  cried  in  a  fever  of  dis- 
may. Her  one  wish  now  was  for  Hugh  to  present  him- 


354  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

self.  She  forgot  at  once  her  own  terror  and  false  shame; 
she  remembered  no  more  her  feminine  shrinking;  self  had 
vanished  from  her  mind  altogether;  she  thought  only  of, 
poor  dying  Winifred.  And  of  Hugh  too.  For  she 
couldn't  bear  to  believe,  even  after  all  she  had  heard  and 
known  of  his  life,  that  the  Hugh  she  had  once  loved  and 
trusted  could  let  his  wife  thus  die  in  his  absence — could 
let  her  die,  himself  unforgiven. 

"I've  sent  him  off  about  his  business  for  an  hour's 
stroll,"  the  doctor  answered  with  professional  calmness. 
"She's  evidently  in  a  highly  hysterical  condition,  and  the 
sight  of  him  only  increases  her  excitement.  It's  a  sad 
case,  but  a  painfully  common  one.  A  husband's  presence 
is  often  the  very  worst  thing  on  earth  for  a  patient  so 
affected.  I  thought  it  would  do  her  far  more  good  to 
have  you  alone  with  her — you're  always  so  gentle  and  so 
soothing,  Miss  Challoner." 

Elsie  glanced  back  at  him  with  swimming  eyes.'  "But 
suppose  she  were  to  die  while  he's  gone,"  she  murmured 
low  with  profound  emotion. 

The  doctor  pursed  up  his  lips  philosophically.  "It  can't 
be  helped,"  he  answered  with  a  faint  shrug.  "That's  just 
what'll  happen,  I'm  very  much  afraid.  We  can  only  do 
the  best  we  can.  This  crisis  has  evidently  been  too  severe 
for  her." 

As  he  spoke,  Winifred  turned  up  from  the  bed  an 
appealing  face,  and  beckoned  Elsie  to  bend  down  closer 
to  her.  "Elsie,"  she  whispered,  in  a  low  hoarse  voice, 
"send  out  for  Hugh.  I  want  him  now. — I  should  like*  to 
kiss  him  before  I  die.  I  think  I'm  going.  I  won't  last 
much  longer." 

Elsie  hurried  out  to  Warren  in  the  anteroom.  "Go," 
she  cried  eagerly,  through  her  blinding  tears — "go  and 
find  Hugh.  Winifred  wants  him;  she  wants  to  kiss  him 
before  she  dies.  Look  for  him  through  all  the  streets  till 
you  find  him,  and  send  him  home.  She  wants  to  forgive 
him." 

Warren  gazed  close  at  her  with  reverent  eyes.  "She 
wants  to  forgive  him,  Elsie?"  he  cried  half  incredulous. 
"She  wants  to  forgive  him,  that  hard  little  woman! 
You've  brought  her  round  to  that  already?" 


AT  REST  AT  LAST.  355 

"Yes,"  Elsie  answered. — "Go  quick  and  find  him.  She 
isn't  hard;  she's  tender  as  a  child.  She's  dying  now — 
dying  of  cramped  and  thwarted  affection.  In  another 
half-hour,  it  may  be  too  late.  Go  at  once,  I  beg  of  you." 

Warren  answered  her  never  a  single  word,  but,  nodding 
acquiescence,  rushed  down  by  himself  to  the  esplanade 
and  the  shore  in  search  of  his  enemy.  Poor  baffled  ene- 
my, how  his  heart  ached  for  him!  At  such  a  moment, 
who  could  help  pitying  him? 

"Is  he  coming?"  Winifred  asked  from  the  bed  feebly. 

"Not  yet,  darling,"  Elsie  answered  in  a  hushed  voice; 
"but  Warren's  gone  out  to  try  and  find  him.  He'll  be  here 
soon.  Lie  still  and  wait  for  him." 

Winifred  lay  quite  still  for  some  minutes 'more,  breath- 
ing hard  and  loud  on  the  bed  where  they  had  laid  her. 
The  moments  appeared  to  spread  themselves  over  hours. 
But  no  Hugh  came.  At  last  she  beckoned  Elsie  nearer 
again,  with  a  frail  hand  that  seemed  almost  to  have  lost 
all  power  of  motion.  Elsie  leaned  over  her  with  her  ear 
laid  close  to  Winifred's  lips.  The  poor  girl's  voice  sound- 
ed very  weak  and  all  but  inaudible  now.  "I  can't  last  till 
he  comes,  Elsie,"  she  murmured  low.  "But  tell  him  I 
forgave  him.  Tell  him  I  asked  him  to  forgive  me  in  turn. 
Tell  him  I  wanted  to  kiss  him  good-bye.  But  even  that 
last  wish  was  denied  me.  And  Elsie" — her  fingers 
clutched  her  friend's  convulsively — "tell  him  all  along  I've 
always  loved  him.  I  loved  him  from  the  very  depths  of 
my  soul.  I  never  loved  any  one  as  I  loved  that  man. 
When  I  hated  him  most,  I  loved  him  dearly.  It  was  my 
very  love  that  made  me  so  hate  him.  He  starved  my 
heart;  and  now  it's  broken." 

Elsie  stooped  down  and  kissed  her  forehead.  A  smile 
played  lambent  over  Winifred's  face  at  the  gentle  kiss. 
The  doctor  lifted  his  open  hand  in  warning.  Elsie  bent 
over  her  with  gathered  brows  and  strained  eyes  for  a  sign 
of  breath  for  a  moment.  "Gone?"  she  asked  at  last  with 
mute  lips  of  the  doctor. 

"Gone,"  the  calmer  observer  answered  with  a  grave  in- 
clination of  his  head  toward  Elsie.  "Rapid  collapse.  A 
singular  case.  She  suffered  no  pain  at  the  last,  poor 
lady." 


356  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

Elsie  flung  herself  wildly  into  an  easy-chair  and  burst 
into  tears  more  burning  than  ever. 

A  touch  on  her  shoulder.  She  looked  up  with  a  start. 
Could  this  be  Hugh?  Thank  Heaven,  no!  It  was  War- 
ren who  touched  her  shoulder  lightly.  Half  an  hour  had 
passed,  and  he  had  now  come  back  again.  But,  alas,  too 
late.  "No  need  to  stop  here  any  longer,"  he  said  rever- 
ently. "Hugh's  downstairs,  and  they're  breaking  the 
news  to  him.  He  doesn't  know  yet  you're  here  at  all. 
I  didn't  speak  to  him.  I  thought  some  other  person 
would  move  him  more.  I  saw  him  on  the  quay,  and  I  sent 
an  Italian  I  met  on  the  beach  to  tell  him  he  was  wanted, 
and  his  wife  was  dying. — Come  up  to  my  room  on  the 
floor  above.  Hugh  needn't  know?  even  now,  perhaps,  that 
you're  here  at  San  Remo." 

Too  full  to  speak,  Elsie  followed  him  blindly  from  the 
chamber  of  death,  and  stumbled  somehow  up  the  broad 
flight  of  stairs  to  Warren's  apartments  on  the  next  story. 
As  she  reached  the  top  of  the  open  flight,  she  heard  a 
voice — a  familiar  voice,  that  would  once  have  thrilled 
her  to  the  very  heart — on  the  landing  below,  by  Wini- 
fred's bedroom.  Shame  and  fascination  drew  her  differ- 
ent ways.  Fascination  won.  She  couldn't  resist  the  dan- 
gerous temptation  to  look  over  the  edge  of  the  banisters 
for  a  second.  Hugh  had  just  mounted  the  stairs  from 
the  big  entrance  hall,  and  was  talking  by  the  door  in  meas- 
ured tones  with  the  English  doctor. 

"Very  well,"  he  said  in  his  cold  stern  voice,  the  voice 
he  had  always  used  to  Winifred — a  little  lowered  by  con- 
ventional respect,  indeed,  but  scarcely  so  subdued  as  the 
doctor's  own.  "I'm  prepared  for  the  worst.  If  she's 
dead,  say  so.  You  needn't  be  afraid  of  shocking  my 
feelings;  I  expected  it  shortly." 

She  could  see  his  face  distinctly  from  the  spot  where  she 
stood,  and  she  shrank  back  aghast  at  once  from  the  sight 
with  surprise  and  horror.  It  was  Hugh  to  be  sure,  but 
oh,  what  a  Hugh!  How  changed  and  altered  from  that 
light  and  bright  young  dilettante  poet  she  had  loved  and 
worshiped  in  the  old  days  at  Whitestrand.  His  very  form 
and  features,  and  limbs  and  figure  were  no  longer  the 


AT  REST  AT  LAST.  S57 

same;  all  were  unlike,  and  the  difference  was  all  to  their 
disadvantage.  The  man  had  not  only  grown  sterner  and 
harder;  he  was  coarser  and  commoner  and  less  striking 
than  formerly.  His  very  style  had  suffered  visible  degen- 
eration. No  more  of  the  jaunty  old  poetical  air;  turnips 
and  foot-and-mouth  disease,  the  arrears  of  rent  and  the 
struggle  against  reduction,  the  shifting  sands  and  the 
weight  of  the  riparian  proprietors'  question,  had  all  left 
their  mark  stamped  deep  in  ugly  lines  upon  his  face  and 
figure.  He  was  handsome  still,  but  in  a  less  refined  and 
delicate  type  of  manly  beauty.  The  long  smoldering 
war  between  himself  and  Winifred  had  changed  his  ex- 
pression to  a  dogged  ill-humor.  His  eyes  had  grown 
dull  and  sordid  and  selfish,  his  lips  had  assumed  a  sullen 
set,  and  a  ragged  beard  with  unkempt  ends  had  disfigured 
that  clear-cut  and  dainty  chin  that  was  once  so  eloquent 
of  poetry  and  culture.  Altogether,  it  was  but  a  pale  and 
flabby  version  of  the  old,  old  Hugh — a- replica  from  whose 
head  the  halo  had  faded.  Elsie  looked  down  on  him 
from  her  height  of  vantage  with  a  thrill  of  utter  and  hope- 
less disillusionment  Then  she  turned  with  a  pang  of 
remorse  to  Warren.  Was  it  really  possible?  Was  there 
once  a  time  when  she  thought  in  her  heart  that  self-cen- 
tered, hard-hearted,  cold-featured  creature  more  than  a 
match  for  such  a  man  as  Warren? 

"She  is  dead,"  the  doctor  answered  with  professional 
respect.  "She  died  half  an  hour  ago,  quite  happy.  Her 
one  regret  seemed  to  be  for  your  absence.  She  was 
anxiously  expecting  you  to  come  back  and  see  her." 

Hugh  only  answered:  "I  thought  so.  Poor  child.'' 
But  the  very  way  he  said  it — the  half-unconcerned  tone, 
the  lack  of  any  real  depth  of  emotion,  nay,  even  of  the 
decent  pretense  of  tears,  shocked  and  appalled  Elsie  be- 
yond measure.  She  rushed  away  into  Warren's  room, 
and  gave  vent  once  more  to  her  torrent  of  emotion.  ^  The 
painter  laid  his  hand  gently  on  her  beautiful  hair.  "Oh, 
Warren,"  she  cried,  looking  up  at  him  half  doubtful,  "it 
makes  me  ashamed—"  And  she  checked  herself  suddenly. 

"Ashamed  of  what?"  Warren  asked  her  low. 

In  the  fever  of  her  overwrought  feelings,  she  flung  her- 
self passionately  into  his  circling  arms.  "Ashamed  to 


358  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

think,"  she  answered  with  a  sob  of  distress,  "that  I  once 
loved  him !" 


CHAPTER  XLI. 

REDIVIVA! 

Hugh  sat  that  evening,  that  crowded  evening,  alone  in  his 
dingy,  stingy  rooms  with  his  dead  Winifred.  Alone  with 
his  weary,  dreary  thoughts — his  thoughts,  and  a  corpse, 
and  a  ghostly  presence !  Two  women  had  loved  him  dear- 
ly in  their  time,  and  he  had  killed  them  both — Elsie  and 
Winifred.  That  was  the  burden  of  his  moody  brooding. 
What  curse,  he  asked  himself,  lay  upon  his  head?  And 
his  own  heart  told  .him,  in  fitful  moments  of  remorse,  the 
curse  of  utter  and  ingrained  selfishness.  He  pretended 
not  to  listen  to  it  or  to  believe  its  witness;  but  he  knew 
it  spoke  true,  true  and  clear  in  spite  of  itself. 

He  sat  there  bitterly,  late  into  the  night,  with  two  can- 
dles burning  dim  on  the  bare  table  by  his  side,  and  his 
head  buried  between  his  feverish  hands  in  gloomy  misery. 
It  was  a  hateful  night — hateful  and  ghastly;  for  in  the 
bedroom  at  the  side,  the  attendants  of  death,  dispatched 
by  the  doctor,  were  already  busy  at  their  gruesome  work, 
performing  the  last  duties  for  poor  martyred  Winifred. 

He  had  offered  her  up  on  the  altar  of  his  selfish  remorse 
and  regret  for  poor  martyred  Elsie.  The  last  victim  had 
fallen  on  the  grave  of  the  first.  She,  too,  was  dead.  And 
now  his  house  was  indeed  left  unto  him  desolate. 

Somehow,  as  he  sat  there,  with  whirling  brain  and 
heated  brow,  on  fire  in  soul,  he  thought  of  Elsie  far  more 
than  of  Winifred.  The  new  bereavement,  such  as  it  was, 
seemed  to  quicken  and  accentuate  the  sense  of  the  old 
one.  Was  it  that  Winifred's  wild  belief  in  her  recogni- 
tion of  Elsie  that  day  in  the  street  had  roused  once  more 
the  picture  of  his  lost  love's  face  and  form  so  vividly  in 
his  mind?  Or  was  it  that  the  girl  whom  Winifred  had 
pointed  out  to  him  did  really  to  some  slight  extent  resem- 


359 

ble  Elsie,  and  so  recall  her  more  definitely  before  him? 
He  hardly  knew;  but  of  one  thing  he  was  certain — Elsie 
that  night  monopolized  his  consciousness.  His  three- 
year-old  grief  was  still  fresh  and  green.  He  thought  much 
of  Elsie,  and  little  of  Winifred. 

It  was  a  fixed  idea  with  poor  Winifred,  he  knew,  that 
Elsie  was  alive  and  settled  at  San  Remo.  How  the  idea 
first  came  into  her  poor  little  head,  he  really  knew  not. 
He  thought  now  the  story  about  Warren  Relf  having  giv- 
en her  the  notion  was  itself  a  mere  piece  of  her  dying  hys- 
terical delirium.  So  was  her  confident  immediate  identi- 
fication of  the  girl  in  the  street  as  the  actual  Elsie.  No 
trusting,  of  course,  to  a  dying  woman's  impressions.  Still, 
it  was  strange  that  Winifred  should  have  died  with  Elsie, 
Elsie,  Elsie,  floating  ever  in  her  mind's  eye  before  her. 
Strange,  too,  that  the  second  victim  of  his  selfish  love 
should  have  died  with  her  soul  so  fiercely  intent  upon  the 
fixed  and  permanent  image  of  the  first  one.  Strange, 
furthermore,  that  a  girl  seen  casually  in  the  street  should 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  even  in  his  own  unprejudiced  eyes, 
have  so  closely  and  curiously  resembled  Elsie.  It  was 
all  odd.  It  all  fitted  in  to  a  nicety  with  the  familiar  patness 
of  that  curious  fate  that  seemed  through  life  to  dog  him 
so  persistently.  Coincidence  jostled  against  coincidence 
to  confound  him:  opportunity  ran  cheek  by  jowl  with 
occasion  to  work  him  ill.  And  yet,  had  he  but  known 
the  whole  truth  as  it  really  was,  he  would  have  seen  there 
was  never  a  genuine  coincidence  anywhere  in  it  all — that 
everything  had  come  pat  by  deliberate  design :  that  Wini- 
fred had  fixed  upon  San  Remo  on  purpose,  because  she 
actually  knew  Elsie  to  be  living  there:  and  that  the  girl 
they  had  seen  in  the  street  that  afternoon  was  none  other 
than  Elsie  herself — his  very  Elsie  in  flesh  and  blood,  not 
nny  vain  or  deceptive  delusion. 

Late  at  night,  the  well-favored  landlady  came  up,  cour- 
teous and  Italian,  all  respectful  sympathy,  in  a  black  gown 
and  a  mourning  head-dress,  hastily  donned,  as  becomes 
those  who  pay  visits  of  condolence  in  whatever  capacity 
to  the  recently  bereaved.  As  for  Hugh  himself,  he  wore 
still  his  rough  traveling  suit  of  gray  homespun,  and  the 
dust  of  his  journey  lay  thick  upon  him.  But  he  roused 


36&  .     THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

himself  listlessly  at  the  landlady's  approach.  She  was 
bland,  but  sympathetic.  Where  would  Monsieur  sleep? 
the  amiable  proprietress  inquired  in  lisping  French.  Hugh 
started  at  the  inquiry.  He  had  never  thought  at  all  of 
that.  Anywhere,  he  answered,  in  a  careless  voice :  it  was 
all  the  same  to  him:  sous  les  toits,  if  necessary. 

The  landlady  bowed  a  respectful  deprecation.  She 
could  offer  him  a  small  room,  a  most  diminutive  room, 
unfit  for  Monsieur,  in  his  present  condition,  but  still  a 
chambre  de  maitre,  just  above  Madame.  She  regretted 
she  was  unable  to  afford  a  better;  but  the  house  was  full, 
or,  in  a  word,  crowded.  The  world,  you  see,  was  begin- 
ning to  arrive  at  San  Remo  for  the  season.  Proprietors 
in  a  health-resort  naturally  resent  a  death  on  the  prem- 
ises, especially  at  the  very  outset  of  the  winter:  they  regard 
it  as  a  slight  on  the  sanitary  reputation  of  the  place,  and 
incline  to  be  rude  to  the  deceased  and  his  family.  Yet 
nothing  could  be  more  charming  than  the  landlady's  man- 
ner; she  swallowed  her  natural  internal  chagrin  at  so 
untoward  an  event  in  her  own  house  and  at  such  an  un- 
timely crisis,  with  commendable  politeness.  One  would 
have  said  that  a  death  rather  advertised  the  condition  of 
the  house  than  otherwise.  Hugh  nodded  his  head  in  blind 
acquiescence.  "Ou  vous  voulez,  Madame,"  he  answered 
wearily.  ''Upstairs,  if  you  wish.  I'll  go  now. — I'm  sorry 
to  have  caused  you  so  much  inconvenience ;  but  we  never 
know  when  these  unfortunate  affairs  are  likely  to  happen." 

The  landlady  considered  in  her  own  mind  that  the  gen- 
tleman's tone  was  of  the  most  distinguished.  Such  sweet 
manners!  So  thoughtful — so  considerate — so  kindly  re- 
spectful for  the  house's  injured  feelings!  She  was  con- 
scious that  his  courtesy  called  for  some  slight  return. 
"You  have  eaten  nothing,  Monsieur,"  she  went  on,  com- 
passionately. "In  effect,  our  sorrow  makes  us  forget  these 
details  of  everyday  life.  You  do  not  derange  us  at  all; 
but  you  must  let  me  send  you  up  some  little  refreshment." 

Hugh  nodded  again. 

She  sent  him  up  some  cake  and  red  wine  of  the  country 
by  the  Swiss  waiter,  and  Hugh  ate  it  mechanically,  for  he 
was  not  hungry.  Excitement  and  fatigue  had  worn  him 
out  His  game  was  played.  He  followed  the  waiter  up 


REDIVIVA!  361 

to  the  floor  above,  and  was  shown — into  the  next  room  to 
Warren's. 

He  undressed  in  a  stupid,  half  dead-alive  way,  and  lay 
down  on  the  bed  with  his  candle  still  burning.  But  he 
didn't  sleep.  Weariness  and  remorse  kept  him  wide 
awake,  worn  out  as  he  was,  tossing  and  turning  through 
the  long  slow  hours  in  silent  agony.  He  had  time  to 
sound  the  whole  gamut  of  possible  human  passion.  He 
thought  of  Elsie,  the  weary  night  through:  of  dead  Elsie, 
and  at  times,  more  rarely,  of  dead  Winifred  too,  alone  in 
the  chamber  of  death  beneath  him.  Elsie,  in  her  nameless 
grave  away  at  Orfordness:  Winifred,  unburied  below, 
here  at  San  Remo.  A  wild  unrest  possessed  his  fevered 
limbs.  He  murmured  Elsie's  name  to  himself,  in  audible 
tones,  a  hundred  times  over. 

Strange  to  say,  the  sense  of  freedom  was  the  strongest 
of  all  the  feelings  that  crowded  in  upon  him.  Now  that 
Winifred  was  dead,  he  could  do  as  he  chose  with  his  own. 
He  was  no  longer  tied  to  her  will  and  her  criticisms. 
When  he  got  back  to  England,  as  he  would  get  back, 
of  course,  the  moment  he  had  decently  buried  Winifred — 
he  meant  to  put  up  a  fitting  gravestone  at  Orfordness,  if 
he  sold  the  wretched  remainder  of  Whitestrand  to  do  it. 
A  granite  cross  should  mark  that  sacred  spot.  Dead  El- 
sie's grave  should  no  longer  be  nameless.  So  much,  at 
least,  his  remorse  could  effect  for  him. 

For  Winifred  was  dead,  and  Whitestrand  was  his  own. 
At  the  price  of  that  miserable  manor  of  blown  sand  he 
had  sold  his  own  soul  and  Elsie's  life;  and  now  he  would 
gladly  get  rid  of  it  all,  if  only  he  could  raise  out  of  its 
shrunken  relics  a  monument  at  Orfordness  to  Elsie.  For 
three  long  years  that  untended  grave  had  silently  accused 
the  remnants  of  his  conscience:  he  determined  it  should 
accuse  his  soul  no  longer. 

He  would  have  to  begin  life  all  over  again,  of  course. 
This  first  throw  had  turned  out  a  fatal  error.  He  had 
staked  everything  upon  winning  Whitestrand;  and  with 
what  result?  Elsie  lost,  and  Whitestrand,  and  Winifred! 
Loss  all  round:  loss  and  confusion.  In  the  end,  he  found 
himself  far  worse  off  than  he  had  ever  been  at  the  very 
outset,  when  the  world  was  still  before  him  where  to 


J62  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

choose.  No  new  career  now  opened  its  doors  to  him. 
The  bar  was  closed:  he  had  had  his  chance  there,  and 
missed  it  squarely.  Bohemia  was  estranged;  small  room 
for  him  now  in  literature  or  journalism.  Whitestrand  had 
spoilt  his  whole  scheme  of  life  for  him.  He  was  wrecked 
in  port.  And  he  could  never  meet  with  another  Elsie. 

The  big  clock  on  the  landing  ticked  monotonously. 
Each  swing  of  the  pendulum  tortured  him  afresh;  for  it 
called  aloud  to  his  heart  in  measured  tones.  It  cried  as 
plain  as  words  could  say:  "Elsie,  Elsie,  Elsie,  Elsie!" 

Ah,  yes.  He  was  young  enough  to  begin  life  afresh, 
if  that  were  all.  To  begin  all  over  again  is  less  than  noth- 
ing to  a  brave  man.  But  for  whom  or  for  what?  Selfish 
as  he  was,  Hugh  Massinger  couldn't  stand  up  and  face 
the  horrid  idea  of  beginning  afresh  for  himself  alone.  He 
must  have  some' one  to  love,  or  go  under  forever. 

And  still  the  clock  ticked  and  ticked  on:  and  still  it 
cried  in  the  silence  of  the  night:  ''Elsie,  Elsie,  Elsie,  Elsie!" 

At  last  day  dawned,  and  the  morning  broke.  Pale  sun- 
light streamed  in  at  the  one  south  window.  The  room 
was  bare — a  mere  servant's  attic.  Hugh  lay  still  and 
looked  at  the  gaping  cracks  that  diversified  the  gaudily 
painted  Italian  ceiling.  All  night  through,  he  had  fervent- 
ly longed  for  the  morning,  and  thought  when  it  came  he 
would  seize  the  first  chance  to  rise  and  dress  himself. 
Now  it  had  really  come,  he  lay  there  unmoved,  too  tired 
and  too  feeble  to  think  of  stirring. 

Five — six — half-past  six — seven.  He  almost  dozed  out 
of  pure  weariness. 

Suddenly,  he  woke  with  a  quick  start.  A  knock  at  the 
door! — a  timid  knock.  Somebody  come  with  a  message, 
apparently.  Hugh  rose  in  haste,  and  held  the  door  just 
a  little  ajar  to  ask  in  his  bad  Italian,  "What  is  it?" 

A  boy's  hand  thrust  a  letter  sideways  through  the  nar- 
row opening.  "Is  it  for  you,  signer?"  he  asked,  peering 
with  black  eyes  through  the  chink  at  the  Englishman. 

Hugh  glanced  at  the  letter  in  profound  astonishment- 
Oh,  Heavens,  what  is  this?  How  incredible — how  mys- 
terious! For  a  moment  the  room  swam  wildly  around 
him;  he  hardly  knew  how  to  believe  his  eyes.  Was  it 
part  of  the  general  bewilderment  of  things  that  seemed 


REDIVIVA!  363 

to  conspire  by  constant  shocks  against  his  perfect  sanity? 
Was  he  going  mad,  or  was  some  enemy  trying  to  con- 
fuse and  confound  him?  Had  some  wretch  been  dabbling 
in  hideous  forgeries?  For  the  envelope  was  addressed — 
Oh,  horror  of  horrors! — in  dead  Elsie's  hand;  and  it  bore 
in  those  well-known  angular  characters  the  simple  in- 
scription, "Warren  Relf,  Esq.,  Villa  della  Fontana  (Piano 
3°),  Avenue  Vittorio  Emmanuele,  San  Remo." 

He  recognized  this  voice  from  the  grave  at  once.  Dead 
Elsie!  To  Warren  Relf!  His  fingers  clutched  it  with  a 
fierce  mad  grip.  He  could  never  give  it  up.  To  Warren 
Relf!  And  from  dead  Elsie! 

"Is  it  for  you,  signer?"  the  boy  asked  once  more,  as 
he  let  it  go  with  reluctance  from  his  olive-brown  fingers. 

"For  me? — Yes,"  Hugh  answered,  still  clutching  it 
eagerly.  "For  me! — Who  sends  it?" 

"The  signorina  at  the  Villa  Rossa — Signorina  Cialoner," 
the  boy  replied,  getting  as  near  as  his  Italian  lips  could 
manage  to  the  sound  of  Challoner.  "She  told  me  most 
stringently  to  deliver  it  up  to  yourself,  signor,  into  your 
proper  ringers,  and  on  no  account  to  let  it  fall  into  the 
hands  of  the  English  gentleman  on  the  second  story." 

"Good,"  Hugh  answered,  closing  the  door  softly. 
"That's  quite  right.  Tell  her  you  gave  it  me."  Then  he 
added  in  English  with  a  cry  of  triumph:  "Good  morn- 
ing, jackanapes!"  After  which  he  flung  himself  down 
on  the  bed  once  more  in  a  perfect  frenzy  of  indecision 
and  astonishment. 

For  two  minutes  he  couldn't  make  up  his  mind  to  break 
open  that  mysterious  missive  from  the  world  of  the  dead, 
so  strangely  delivered  by  an  unknown  hand  at  his  own 
door  on  the  very  morrow  of  Winifred's  sudden  death,  and 
addressed  in  buried  Elsie's  hand,  as  clear  as  of  old,  to  his 
dearest  enemy.  What  a  horrible  concatenation  of  sig- 
nificant circumstances!  He  turned  it  over  and  over  again, 
unopened,  in  his  awe;  and  all  the  time  that  morose  clock 
outside  still  ticked  in  his  ear,  less  loudly  than  before:  bl- 

>16At  last  making  up  his  mind  with  a  start,  he  opened  it 
half  overcome  with  a  pervading  sense  of  mystery.    Anc 


364  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

this  was  what  he  read  in  it,  beyond  shadow  of  doubt,  in 
dead  Elsie's  very  own  handwriting: 

"Villa  Rossa,  Thursday,  7:30,  morning. 
"Dearest  Warren, 

"I  will  be  ready,  as  you  suggest,  by  the  9:40. 
But  you  musn't  go  with  me  farther  than  Paris.  That  will 
allow  you  to  get  back  to  Edie  and  the  Motherkin  by  the 
6:39  on  Saturday  evening. — I  wish  I  could  have  waited 
here  in  San  Remo  till  after  dear  Winifred's  funeral  was 
over;  but  I  quite  see  with  you  how  dangerous  such  a 
course  might  prove.  Every  moment  I  stop  exposes  me 
to  the  chance  of  an  unexpected  meeting.  You  must  call 
on  Hugh  when  you  get  back  from  Paris,  and  give  him 
poor  Winifred's  last  forgiving  message.  Some  day — you 
know  when,  dearest — I  may  face  seeing  him  myself,  per- 
haps; and  then  I  can  fulfill  my  promise  to  her  in  person. 
But  not  till  then.  And  that  may  be  never.  I  hardly 
know  what  I'm  writing,  I  feel  so  dazed;  but  I'll  meet  you 
at  the  station  at  the  hour  you  mention. — No  time  for  more. 
In  great  haste — my  hand  shakes  with  the  shock  still — 
"Yours,  ever  lovingly  and  devotedly, 

"Elsie." 

The  revulsion  was  awful.  For  a  minute  or  two  Hugh 
failed  to  take  it  all  in.  You  cannot  unthink  past  years  at 
a  jump.  The  belief  that  Elsie  was  dead  and  buried  at 
Orfordness  had  grown  so  ingrained  in  the  fabric  of  his 
brain  that  at  first  he  suspected  deliberate  treachery.  Such 
things  have  been.  He  had  forged  himself:  might  not 
Warren  Relf,  that  incarnate  fiend,  be  turning  his  own 
weapon — meanly — against  him? 

But  as  he  gazed  and  gazed  at  dead  Elsie's  hand — dead 
Elsie's  own  hand — unmistakably  hers — no  forger  on  earth 
(not  even  himself)  was  ever  half  so  clever — the  truth  grew 
gradually  clearer  and  clearer.  Dead  Elsie  was  Elsie  dead 
no  longer;  she  had  escaped  on  that  awful  evening  at 
Whitestrand.  It  wasn't  Elsie  at  all  that  was  buried  in  the 
nameless  grave  at  Orfordness.  The  past  was  a  lie.  The 
present  alone — the  present  was  true.  Elsie  was  here,  to- 
day, at  San  Remo ! 


REDIVIVA!  365 

With  a  great  thrill  of  joy,  that  fact  at  last  came  clearly 
home  to  him.  The  world  whirled  back  through  the  ages 
again.  Then  Elsie,  his  Elsie,  was  still  living!  He  hadn't 
killed  her.  He  was  no  murderer.  It  was  all  a  hideous, 
hideous  mistake.  The  weight,  the  weight  was  lifted  from 
his  soul.  A  mad  delight  usurped  its  place.  His  heart 
throbbed  with  a  wild  pulsation.  The  clock  on  the  stair- 
case ticked  loud  for  joy:  "Elsie,  Elsie,  Elsie,  Elsie!" 

He  buried  his  face  in  his  hands  and  wept — wept  as  he 
never  had  wept  for  Winifred — wept  as  he  never  had  wept 
in  his  life  before — wept  with  frantic  gladness  for  Elsie 
recovered. 

Slowly  his  conceptions  framed  themselves  anew.  His 
mind  could  only  take  it  all  in  piecemeal.  Bit  by  bit  he  set 
himself  to  the  task — no  less  a  task  than  to  reconstruct  the 
universe. — Winifred  must  have  known  Elsie  was  here.  It 
was  Elsie  herself  that  Winifred  and  he  had  seen  yesterday. 

Fresh  thoughts  poured  in  upon  him  in  a  bewildering 
flood.  He  was  dazzled,  dazed,  dumbfounded  with  their 
number.  Elsie  was  alive,  and  he  had  something  left, 
therefore,  to  live  for.  Yesterday  morning  that  knowledge 
would  have  been  less  than  nothing  worth  to  him  while 
Winifred  lived.  To-day,  thank  Heaven — for  Winifred 
was  dead — it  meant  more  to  him  than  all  the  wealth  of 
Croesus. 

He  saw  through  that  miserable  money-grubbing  now. 
Gold,  indeed!  what  better  was  gold  than  any  other  chemi- 
cal element?  Next  time — next  time,  he  would  choose 
more  wisely.  Wisdom  in  life,  he  thought  to  himself  with 
a  flash  of  philosophy,  means  just  this — to  know  what 
things  will  bring  you  most  happiness. 

How  opportunely  Winifred  had  disappeared  from  the 
scene!  In  the  nick  of  time — on  the  very  stroke  and  crisis 
of  his  fate !  At  the  turn  of  the  tide  that  leads  on  to  fortune ! 
Felix opportunitate mortis,  indeed!  He  had  no  regret,  no 
remorse  now,  for  poor  betrayed  and  martyred  Winifred. 

Winifred!  What  was  Winifred  to  him,  or  he  to  Wini- 
fred, in  a  world  that  still  held  his  own  beloved  Elsie? 

How  vividly  those  words  came  back  to  him  now: 
"Don't  I  know  how  you've  brought  me  to  San  Remo, 
dying  as  I  am,  to  be  near  her  and  to  see  her  when  I'm 


366  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

dead  and  buried!  You've  tried  tc  murder  me  by  slow 
degrees,  to  marry  Elsie! — Well,  you've  carried  your  point: 
you've  killed  me  at  last;  and  when  I'm  dead  and  gone, 
you  can  marry  Elsie." 

He  hadn't  meant  it;  he  had  never  dreamed  of  it.  But 
how  neat  and  exact  it  had  all  come  out!  How  fortune, 
whom  he  reviled,  had  been  playing  his  game!  His  sor- 
row was  turned  at  once  into  wild  rejoicing.  Winifred 
dead  and  Elsie  living!  What  fairy  tale  ever  ended  so 
pat?  He  repeated  it  over  and  over  again  to  himself: 
"They  were  both  married  and  lived  happily  ever  after." 

All's  well  that  ends  well.  The  Winifred  episode  had 
come  and  gone.  But  Elsie  remained  as  permanent  back- 
ground. 

And  how  strangely  Winifred  herself,  in  her  mad  desire, 
had  contributed  to  this  very  denouement  of  his  troubles. 
"I  shall  go  to  San  Remo,  if  I  go  at  all,  and  to  nowhere 
else  on  the  whole  Riviera.  I  prefer  to  face  the  worst, 
thank  you!"  The  words  flashed  back  with  fresh  mean- 
ing on  his  soul.  If  she  hadn't  so  set  her  whole  heart  on 
San  Remo,  he  himself  would  never  have  thought  of  going 
there.  And  then  he  would  never  have  known  about  Elsie. 
For  that,  at  least,  he  had  to  thank  Winifred. 

"When  I'm  dead  and  gone,  you  can  marry  Elsie!" 

But  what  was  this  discordant  note  in  the  letter — Elsie's 
letter — to  Warren  Relf — Warren  Relf,  his  dearest  enemy? 
Was  Warren  Relf  at  the  pension,  then?  Had  Warren 
Relf  been  conspiring  against  him?  In  another  flash,  it 
all  came  back  to  him — the  two  scenes  at  the  Cheyne  Row 
Club — Warren's  conversation  with  his  friend  Potts — the 
mistakes  and  errors  of  his  hasty  preconceptions.  How 
one  fundamental  primordial  blunder  had  colored  and 
distorted  all  his  views  of  the  case!  He  felt  sure  now, 
morally  sure,  that  Warren  Relf  had  rescued  Elsie — the 
sneak,  the  eavesdropper,  in  his  miserable  mud-boat!  And 
yet — if  Warren  Relf  hadn't  done  so,  there  would  be  no 
Elsie  at  all  for  him  now  to  live  for.  He  recognized  the 
fact;  and  he  hated  him  for  it.  That  he  should  own  his 
Elsie  to  that  cur,  that  serpent! 

And  all  these  years  Warren  Relf — insidious  creature — 
had  kept  her  in  hiding,  for  his  own  base  objects,  and 


REDIVIVA!  367 

had  tried  to  wriggle  himself,  with  snake-like  and  lizard- 
like  contortions  and  twistings,  into  Hugh's  own  rightful 
place  in  Elsie's  affections!  The  mean,  mean  reptile!  to 
worm  his  way  in  secret  into  the  sacred  love  of  another 
man's  maiden!  Hugh  loathed  and  hated  him! 

Discordant  note!  Why,  yes — see  this:  "Some  day — 
you  know  when,  dearest — I  may  face  seeing  him  my- 
self, perhaps." — Then  surely  Elsie  must,  have  consented 
to  fling  herself  away  upon  Relf,  as  he,  Hugh,  had  flung 
himself  away  upon  Winifred.  But  that  was  before  Wini- 
fred died.  He  was  free  now — free,  free  as  the  wind,  to 
marry  Elsie.  And  Elsie  would  marry  him:  he  was  sure 
of  that.  Elsie's  heart  would  come  back  to  roost  like  his 
own,  on  the  old  perch.  Elsie  would  never  belie  her  love ! 
Elsie  would  love  him ;  Elsie  would  marry  him. 

What!  Accept  that  creature  Relf  in  his  own  place? 
Hyperion  to  a  Satyr!  Impossible!  Incredible!  Past  all 
conception!  No  Eve  would  listen  to  such  a  serpent  now- 
adays. Especially  not  when  he,  Hugh  Massinger,  was 
eager  and  keen  to  woo  and  wed  her.  "The  crane,"  he 
thought,  with  his  old  knack  of  seeing  everything  through 
a  haze  of  poetry — "the  crane  may  chatter  idly  of  the  crane, 
the  dove  may  murmur  of  the  dove,  but  I — an  eagle — 
clang  an  eagle  to  the  sphere."  When  once  he  appeared 
in  his  panoply  before  her  eyes  as  Elsie's  suitor,  your  War- 
ren Relfs  and' your  lesser  creatures  would  be  forgotten  and 
forsaken,  and  he  would  say  to  Elsie,  like  the  Prince^  to 
Ida:  "Lay  thy  sweet  hands  in  mine  and  trust  to  me." 

And  Elsie,  Elsie  herself  felt  it;  felt  it  already— of  that 
he  was  certain.  Felt  this  Relf  creature  was  not  worthy 
of  her;  felt  she  must  answer  to  her  truer  instincts ;  felt  her 
old  love  must  soon  return.  For  did  she  not  say  in  this 
very  letter,  "But  not  till  then.  And  that  may  be  never? 

That  may  be  never!  Oh,  precious  words!  She  was 
leaving  the  door  half-open,  then,  for  her  poet. 

Poet !  His  heart  leaped  up  at  the  thought.  New  vistas 
— old  vistas  long  since  closed — opened  out  afresh  in  long 
perspective  before  him.  Ay,  with  such  a  fount  of  inspi- 
ration as  that,  to  what  heights  of  poetry  might  he  not  yet 
attain !  What  peaks  of  Parnassus  might  he  not  yet 
On  what  pinnacles  of  glory  might  he  not  yet  poise  himseh! 


368  THIS  MORTAL,  C  OIL. 

Elsie,  Elsie,  Elsie,  Elsie!  That  was  a  talisman  to  crush 
all  opposition,  an  "Open  Sesame"  to  prize  all  doors.  With 
Elsie's  love,  what  would  be  impossible  to  him? 

Life  floated  in  new  colors  before  his  eager  eyes.  He 
dreamed  dreams  and  saw  visions,  as  he  lay  on  his  bed  in 
those  golden  moments.  Earth  was  dearer,  fairer,  than  he 
ever  deemed  it.  The  fever  of  love  and  ambition  and  hate 
was  upon  him  now  in  full  force.  He  reeled  and  reveled 
in  the  plentitude  of  his  own  wild  and  hectic  imagination. 
He  could  do  anything,  everything,  anything.  He  could 
move  mountains  in  his  fervent  access  of  faith;  he  could 
win  worlds  in  his  mad  delight;  he  could  fight  wild  beasts 
in  his  sudden  glory  of  heroic  temper. 

And  all  the  while,  poor  dead  Winifred  lay  cold  and  white 
in  the  bedroom  below.  And  Elsie  was  off — off  to  Eng- 
land with  Warren  Relf — that  wretch!  that  serpent!  by 
the  9:40. 


CHAPTER  XLII. 

FACE  TO  FACE. 

That  hint  sobered  him.  He  roused  himself  to  actual 
action  at  last.  It  was  now  eight,  and  Elsie  was  off  by  the 
9:40!  Too  many  thoughts  had  crowded  him  too  fast. 
That  single  hour  inclosed  for  Hugh  Massinger  a  whole 
eternity.  Earth  had  become  another  world  for  him  since 
the  stroke  of  seven.  The  sun  had  gone  back  upon  the  dial 
of  his  life,  and  left  him  once  more  at  the  same  point  where 
he  had  stood  before  he  ever  met  Winifred.  At  the  same 
point,  but  oh,  how  differently  circumstanced!  He  had 
gained  experience  and  wisdom  since  then :  he  had  learned 
the  lessons  of  A  Life's  Philosophy.  All  was  not  gold 
that  glittered,  he  knew  nowadays.  The  life  was  more 
than  food,  the  body  than  raiment,  love  than  Whitestrand, 
Elsie  than  Winifred.  He  would  never  go  astray  after  the 
root  of  all  evil,  as  long  as  he  lived  and  loved,  again  He 
would  be  the  Demas  of  no  delusive  silver  mine.  On  his 
voyage  of  discovery,  he  had  found  out  his  own  soul — for 


PACE  TO  FACE.  S69 

he  had  a  soul,  a  soul  capable  of  appreciating  Elsie ;  and 
he  would  not  fling  it  away  a  second  time  for  filthy  lucre, 
common  dross,  the  deceitfulness  of  riches,  the  mammon 
of  unrighteousness.  He  had  a  soul  capable  of  appreciat- 
ing Elsie:  he  repeated  to  himself  with  the  minor  poet's 
intense  delight  in  the  ring  and  flow  of  his  own  verses, 
those  two  lines,  the  refrain  of  a  villanelle  he  had  once 
— years  and  years  ago — sent  her:  "So  low!  'She  loves 
me!  Can  I  be  so  low?  So  base!  I  love  her!  Can  I  be 
so  base?"  He  loved  Elsie.  And  Elsie  was  off  by 
the  9:40. 

There  was  the  key  to  the  immediate  future.  He  rose 
and  dressed  himself  with  all  expedition,  remembering — 
though  by  an  afterthought — for  decency's  sake  to  put  on 
his  black  cutaway  coat  and  his  darkest  trousers — he  had 
with  him  none  black  save  those  of  his  evening  suit — and 
to  approach  as  near  to  a  mourning  tie  as  the  narrow  re- 
sources of  his  wardrobe  permitted.  But  it  was  all  a  hollow, 
hollow  mockery,  a  transparent  farce,  a  mere  outer  sem- 
blance :  his  coat  might  be  black,  but  his  heart  was  blithe 
as  a  lark's  on  a  bright  May  morning. 

He  drew  up  the  blind:  the  sun  was  flooding  the  bay 
and  the -hillsides  with  Italian  lavishness.  Flowers  were 
gay  on  the  parterres  of  the  public  garden.  Who  could 
pretend  to  be  sad  at  soul  on  a  day  like  this,  worthy  of 
whitest  chalk,  when  the  sun  shone  and  flowers  bloomed 
and  Elsie  was  alive  again?  Let  the  dead  bury  their  dead. 
For  him,  Elsie!  for  Elsie  was  alive  again. 

He  lived  once  more  a  fresh  life.  What  need  to  play  the 
hypocrite,  here,  alone,  in  his  own  hired  house,  in  the 
privacy  of  his  lonely  widowed  bedchamber?  He  smiled 
to  himself  in  the  narrow  looking-glass  fastened  against  the 
wall.  He  laughed  hilariously.  He  showed  his  even 
white  teeth  in  his  joy :  they  shone  like  pearl.  He  trimmed 
his  beard  with  unwonted  care ;  for  now  he  must  make  him- 
self worthy  of  Elsie.  "If  I  be  dear  to  some  one  else,"  he 
murmured,  with  the  lover  in  "Maud,"  "then  I  should  be 
to  myself  more  dear."  And  that  he  was  dear  to  Elsie,  he 
was  quite  certain.  Her  love  had  suffered  eclipse,  no 
doubt:  Warren  Relf,  like  a  shadow,  had  flitted  for  a  n 
ment  in  between  them;  but  when  once  he,  Hugh,  burst 


370  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

forth  like  the  sun  upon  her  eyes  once  more,  Warren  Relf, 
paled  and  ineffectual,  would  hide  his  diminished  head  and 
vanish  into  vacancy. 

"Warren  Relf!  That  reptile — that  vermin!  Ha,  ha! 
I  have  you  now  at  my  feet — my  heel  on  your  neck,  you 
sneaking  traitor.  Hiding  my  Elsie  so  long  from  my 
sight!  But  I  nick  you  now,  on  the  eve  of  your  victory. 
You  thinl^you  have  her  safe  in  the  hollow  of  your  hand. 
You'll  carry  her  off  away  from  me  to  England!  Fool! 
Idiot!  Imbecile!  Fatuous!  You  reckon  this  time 
without  your  host  There's  many  a  slip  'twixt  the  cup 
and  the  lip.  I'll  dash  away  this  cup,  my  fine  fellow,  from 
yours.  Your  lip  shall  never  touch  my  Elsie's.  Nectar  is 
for  gods,  and  not  for  mudlarks.  I'll  bring  you  down  on 
your  marrow-bones  before  me.  You  tried  to  outwit  me. 
Two  can  play  at  that  game,  my  friend." — He  seized  the 
bolster  from  the  bed,  and  flinging  it  with  a  dash  on  the 
carpetless  floor,  trampled  it  in  an  access  of  frenzy  under- 
foot, for  Warren  in  effigy.  The  relief  from  his  strain 
had  come  too  quick.  He  was  beside  himself  now  with 
love  and  rage,  mad  with  excitement,  drunk  with  hatred 
and  joy  and  jealousy.  That  creature  marry  his  Elsie,  for- 
sooth !  He  danced  in  a  fever  of  prospective  triumph  over 
the  prostrate  body  of  his  fallen  enemy. 

Warren  Relf,  meanwhile,  by  himself  next  door,  was  say- 
ing to  himself,  as  he  dressed  and  packed,  in  sober  sin- 
cerity: "Poor  Massinger!  What  a  terrible  time  he  must  be 
having,  down  there  alone  with  his  dead  wife  and  his  accus- 
ing conscience!  Ought  I  to  go  down  and  lighten  his 
burden  for  him,  I  wonder?  Such  remorse  as  his  must 
be  too  heavy  to  bear.  Ought  I  to  tell  him  that  Elsie's 
alive? — that  that  death  at  least  doesn't  lie  at  his  door? — 
that  he  has  only  to  answer  for  poor  Mrs.  Massinger? — No. 
It  would  be  useless  for  me  to  tell  him.  He  hates  me  too 
much.  He  wouldn't  listen  to  me.  Elsie  shall  break  it 
to  him  in  her  own  good  time.  But  my  heart  aches  for 
him,  for  all  that,  in  spite  of  his  cruelty.  His  worst  enemy 
could  wish  him  no  harm  now.  He  must  be  suffering 
agonies  of  regret  and  repentance.  Perhaps  at  such  a 
moment  he  might  accept  consolation  even  from  me.  But 


FACE  TO  FACE.  371 

probably  not.     I  wish  I  could  do  anything  to  lessen  this 
misery  for  him." 

Why  did  no  answer  come  from  Elsie?  That  puzzled  and 
surprised  Warren  not  a  little.  He  had  begged  her  to 
let  him  know  first  thing  in  the  morning  whether  she  could 
get  away  by  the  9:40.  He  wondered  Elsie  could  be  so 
neglectful — she,  who  was  generally  so  thoughtful  and  so 
trustworthy.  Moment  after  moment  he  watched  and 
waited :  a  letter  must  surely  come  from  Elsie. 

After  a  while,  Hugh's  access  of  mania — for  it  was  little 
less — cooled  down  somewhat.  He  began  to  face  the  po- 
sition like  a  man.  He  must  be  calm ;  he  must  be  sane ; 
he  must  deliberate  sensibly. 

Elsie  was  going  by  the  9:40;  and  Warren  Relf  would  be 
there  to  join  her.  "I'll  meet  you  at  the  station  at  the 
hour  you  mention."  But  not  unless  Relf  received  that 
letter.  Should  he  ever  receive  it?  That  was  the  question. 

He  glanced  once  more  at  the  envelope — torn  hastily 
open:  "Warren  Relf,  Esq.,  Villa  della  Fontana  (Piano 
3°)."  Then  Warren  Relf  was  here,  in  this  selfsame  house 
— on  this  very  floor — next  door,  possibly!  He  would 
like  to  go  in  and  wring  the  creature's  neck  for  him!— 
But  that  would  be  rash,  unadvisable — premature,  at  any 
rate.  The  wise  man  dissembles  his  hate — for  a  while — 
till  occasion  offers.  Some  other  time.  With  better  means 
and  more  premeditation. 

If  he  wrung  the  creature's  neck  now  a  foolish  prejudice 
would  hang  him  for  it,  under  all  the  forms  and  pretenses 
of  law.  And  that  would  be  inconvenient — for  then  he 
could  never  marry  Elsie! 

How  inconsistent!  that  one  should  be  permitted  to 
crush  underfoot  a  lizard  or  an  adder,  but  be  hanged,  by 
a  wretched  travesty  of  justice,  for  wringing  the  neck  of 
that  noxious  vermin!  He  stamped  with  all  his  might 
upon  the  bolster  (vice  Warren  Relf,  not  then  produceable) 
and  gnashed  his  teeth  in  the  fury  of  his  hatred.  'Some 
day,  my  fine  fellow,  it'll  be  your  own  turn,"  he  muttered 
to  himself,  "to  get  really  danced  upon.  And  when  your 
turn  comes,  you  shall  find  no  mercy." 

Curses,  says  the  proverb,  come  home  to  roost. 


372  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

Again  he  sobered  himself  with  a  violent  effort.  It  was 
hard  to  be  calm  with  Elsie  alive,  and  Warren  Relf,  as 
yet  unchoked,  separated  from  him  perhaps  by  no  more 
than  a  thin  lath-and-plaster  partition.  But  the  circum- 
stances absolutely  demanded  calmness.  He  would  re- 
strain himself;  he  would  be  judicial.  What  ought  he 
to  do  in  re  this  letter?  Destroy  it  at  once,  or  serve  it  upon 
the  person  for  whom  it  was  intended? 

Happy  thought!  If  he  let  things  take  their  own  course, 
Relf  would  probably  never  go  down  to  the  station  at  all, 
waiting  like  a  fool  to  hear  from  Elsie;  and  then — why. 
then,  he  might  go  himself  and — well — why  not? — run 
away  with  hef  himself  offhand  to  England ! 

There,  now,  would  be  a  dramatic  triumph  indeed  for 
you!  At  the  very  moment  when  the  reptile  was  waiting 
in  his  lair  for  the  heroine,  to  snatch  her  by  one  bold  stroke 
from  his  slimy  grasp,  and  leave  him,  disconsolate,  to  seek 
her  in  vain  in  an  empty  waiting-room!  It  was  splendid! 
— it  was  magnificent!  The  humor  of  it  made  his  mouth 
water. 

But  no!  The  scandal — the  gossip — the  indecency! 
With  Winifred  dead  in  the  room  below!  He  must  shield 
Elsie  from  so  grave  an  imputation.  He  must  bide  his 
time.  He  must  simulate  grief.  He  must  let  a  proper 
conventional  interval  elapse.  Elsie  was  his,  and  he  must 
guard  her  from  evil  tongues  and  eyes.  He  must  do  noth- 
ing to  compromise  Elsie. 

Still,  he  might  just  go  to  the  station  to  meet  her.  To 
satisfy  his  eyes.  No  harm  in  that.  Why  give  the  note 
at  all  to  the  reptile? 

But  looking  at  it  impartially,  the  straight  road  is  al- 
ways the  safest.  The  proverb  is  right.  Honesty  appears 
to  be  on  the  whole  the  best  policy.  He  had  tried  the 
crooked  path  already,  and  found  it  wanting.  Lying  too 
often  incurs  failure.  Henceforth,  he  would  be — reason- 
ably and  moderately — honest. 

Excess  is  bad  in  any  direction.  The  wise  man  will 
therefore  avoid  excess,  be  it  either  on  the  side  of  vice  or 
of  virtue.  A  middle  course  of  external  decorum  will  be 
found  by  average  minds  the  most  prudent.  On  this,  O 
British  ratepayer,  address  yourself! 


FACE  TO  FACE.  373 

Hugh  took  from  his  portmanteau  an  envelope  and  his 
writing-case.  With  Elsie's  torn  envelope  laid  before  him 
for  a  model,  he  exercised  yet  once  more  his  accustomed 
skill  in  imitating  to  the  letter— to  the  very  stroke,  even— 
the  turns  and  twists  of  that  sacred  handwriting.  But  oh, 
with  what  different  feelings  now!  No  longer  dead  El- 
sie's, but  his  living  love's.  She  wrote  it  herself,  that  very 
morning.  Addressed  as  it  was  to  Warren  Relf,  he  pressed 
it  to  his  lips  in  a  fervor  of  delight,  and  kissed  it  tenderly— 
for  was  it  not  Elsie's? 

His  beautiful,  pure,  noble-hearted  Elsie!  To  write  to 
that  reptile!  And  "Dearest  Warren,"  too!  What  mad- 
ness! What  desecration!  Pah!  It  sickened  him. 

But  it  was  not  for  long.  The  sun  had  risen.  Before  its 
rays  the  lesser  Lucifers  would  soon  efface  themselves. 

He  rang  the  bell,  and  after  the  usual  aristocratic  Italian 
interval,  a  servant  presented  himself.  Your  Italian  never 
shows  a  vulgar  haste  in  answering  bells.  Hugh  handed 
him  the  letter,  readdressed  to  Warren  in  a  forged  imitation 
of  Elsie's  handwriting,  and  asked  simply:  "This  gentle- 
man is  in  the  pension,  is  he?" 

Luigi  bowed  and  smiled  profusely.  "On  the  same 
floor;  next  door,  signer,"  he  answered,  indicating  the 
room  with  a  jerk  of  his  elbow.  The  Italian  waiter  lacks 
polish.  Hugh  noted  the  gesture  with  British  disapproval. 
His  tastes  were  fine :  he  disliked  familiarity. 

On  the  same  floor — as  yet  unchoked !  And  he  couldn't 
get  at  him.  Horrible!  horrible! 

Hugh  dared  not  stop  at  the  pension  for  breakfast.  He 
was  afraid  of  meeting  Relf  face  to  face,  and  till  his  plan 
was  carried  into  execution — for  he  had  indeed  once  more 
a  plan — he  thought  it  wisest  and  safest  for  the  present 
to  avoid  him  studiously.*  He  wanted  to  make  sure  with 
his  own  two  eyes  that  Elsie  was  in  very  truth  alive.  The 
legal  side  of  him  craved  evidence.  When  a  woman  has 
been  dead,  undoubtedly  dead,  for  three  long  years,  only 
ocular  demonstration  in  propria  persona  can  fully  convince 
a  reasonable  man  she  is  quite  resuscitated..  The  age  of 
miracles  is  now  past:  the  age  of  scepticism  is  here  upon 
us.  Hugh  knew  too  well,  from  his  own  private  experi- 
ence, that  documentary  evidence  may  be  but  a  fallible 


374  THIS  riORTAL,  COIL,. 

guide  to  the  facts  of  history.  Some  brute  might  perhaps 
have  meanly  stooped  to  the  caddish  device  of  forgery  to 
confound  him.  He  wouldn't  have  forged  for  such  a  pur- 
pose himself:  he  would  use  that  doubtful  weapon  in  self- 
defense  only.  Let  Relf  go  down  to  the  station  by  all 
means:  he  would  follow  after,  at  a  safe  distance,  or  go 
before,  if  that  seemed  better,  and  on  the  unimpeachable 
authority  of  his  own  retina  and  his  own  discriminative 
optic  nerves  make  perfectly  certain  he  saw  Elsie.  Un- 
seen, of  course;  for  at  present  he  meant  to  keep  quite  dark. 
Elsie  perhaps  would  hardly  like  to  know  he  had  stolen 
away  at  such  a  moment — even  to  see  her,  from  dead 
Winifred. 

For  Elsie's  sake  he  must  assume  some  regret  for  dead 
Winifred. 

So  he  told  the  landlady  with  a  sigh  of  sensibility  he  had 
no  heart  that  morning  to  taste  his  breakfast.  He  would 
go  and  stroll  by  the  sea-shore  alone.  Everything  had 
been  arranged  about  the  poor  signora."  "What  grief?" 
said  the  landlady.  "Look  you,  Luigi,  he  can  eat  nothing." 

At  a  shabby  trattoria  in  the  main  street,  he  took  his 
breakfast — a  sloppy  breakfast;  but  the  coffee  was  good, 
with  the  exquisite  aroma  of  the  newly  roasted  berry,  and 
the  fresh  fruit  was  really  delicious.  On  the  Mediterranean 
slope,  coffee  and  fresh  fruit  cover  a  multitude  of  sins. 
What  could  you  have  nicer,  now,  than  these  green  figs,  so 
daintily  purpled  on  the  sunny  side,  and  these  small  white 
grapes  from  the  local  vineyards  with  their  faint  under- 
tone of  musky  flavor?  The  olives,  too,  smack  of  the  bask- 
ing soil;  "the  luscious  glebe  of  vine-clad  lands,"  he  had 
called  it  himself  in  that  pretty  song  in  "A  Life's  Philoso- 
phy."— He  repeated  the  lines  for  his  own  pleasure,  rolling 
them  on  his  palate  with  vast  satisfaction,  as  a  connoisseur 
rolls  good  old  Maderia: 

"My  thirsty  bosom  pants  for  sunlit  waters, 
And  luscious  glebe  of  vine-clad  lands, 

And  chanted  psalms  of  freedom's  bronze-cheeked  daughters, 
And  sacred  grasp  of  brotherly  hands." 

That  was  written  before  he  knew  Winifred!  His  spirits 
were  high.  He  enjoyed  his  breakfast.  A  quarter  to  nine 
by  the  big  church  clock;  and  Elsie  goes  at  9:40. 


FACE  TO  FACE.  375 

He  strolled  down  at  his  leisure  to  the  station  with  his 
hands  in  his  pockets.  Fresh  air  and  sunshine  smiled  at 
his  humor.  He  would  have  liked  to  hide  himself  some- 
where, and  "see  unseen,"  like  Paris  with  the  goddesses 
in  the  dells  of  Ida;  but  stern  fact  intervened,  in  the  shape 
of  that  rigid  continental  red-tape  railway  system  which 
admits  nobody  to  the  waiting-rooms  without  the  passport 
of  a  ticket.  He  must  buy  a  ticket  for  form's  sake,  then, 
and  go  a  little  way  on  the  same  line  with  them ;  just  for  a 
station  or  two — say  to  Monte  Carlo. — He  presented  him- 
self at  the  wicket  accordingly,  and  took  a  first  single  as 
far  as  the  Casino. 

In  the  waiting-room  he  lurked  in  a  dark  corner,  behind 
the  bookstall  with  the  paper-covered  novels.  Elsie  and 
Relf  would  have  plenty  to  do,  he  shrewdly  suspected,  in 
looking  after  their  own  luggage  without  troubling  their 
heads  about  casual  strangers.  So  he  lurked  and  waited. 
The  situation  was  a  strange  one.  Would  Elsie  turn  up? 
His  heart  stood  still.  After  so  many  years,  after  so  much 
misery,  to  think  he  was  waiting  again  for  Elsie! 

As  each  new-comer  entered  the  waiting-room  his  pulse 
leaped  again  with  a  burst  of  expectation.  The  time  went 
slowly:  9:30,  9:35,  9:36,  9:37 — would  Elsie  come  in  time 
for  the  9:40? 

A  throb!  a  jump! — alive!  alive!  It  was  Elsie,  Elsie, 
Elsie,  Elsie! 

She  never  turned ;  she  never  saw.  She  walked  on  has- 
tily, side  by  side  with  Warren,  the  serpent,  the  reptile. 
Hugh  let  her  pass  out  onto  the  platform  and  choose  her 
carriage.  His  flood  of  emotion  fairly  overpowered  him. 
Then  he  sneaked  out  with  a  hangdog  air,  and  selected 
another  compartment  for  himself,  a  long  way  behind  ] 
sie's.  But  when  once  he  was  seated  in  his  place,  at  his 
ease,  he  let  his  pent-up  feelings  have  free  play.  He  sat  m 
his  corner,  and  cried  for  joy.  The  tears  followed  one 
another  unchecked  down  his  cheeks.  Elsie  was  alive! 
He  had  seen  Elsie! 

The  train  rattled  on  upon  its  way  to  the  frontier, 
dighera,  Ventimiglia,  the  Roya,  the  Nervia,  were  soon 
passed.     They  entered  France  at  the  Pont  St.  Louis. 


376  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

Elsie  was  crying  in  her  carriage  too — crying  for  poor 
tortured,  heart-broken  Winifred.  And  not  without  cer- 
tain pangs  of  regret  for  Hugh  as  well.  She  had  loved 
him  once,  and  he  was  her  own  cousin.  "Oh,  Warren," 
she  cried,  for  they  had  no  others  with  them  in  their 
through-carriage — it  was  the  season  when  hardly  any- 
body travels  northward — "how  terribly  he  must  feel  it, 
all  alone  by  himself  in  a  strange  land,  with  that  poor  dead 
girl  that  he  hounded  to  death  for  his  only  company!  I 
can't  bear  to  think  how  much  he  must  be  suffering.  Per- 
haps at  Marseilles  you'd  better  telegraph  to  him  your 
profound  sympathy,  and  tell  him  that  Winifred  said  be- 
fore she  died — said  earnestly  she  loved  him  and  forgave 
him." 

"I  will,"  Warren  answered.  "I  thought  of  him  myself 
not  without  some  qualms  at  the  pension  this  morning. 
Perhaps  at  times,  for  your  sake,  knowing  what  you've 
suffered,  I've  been  too  harsh  toward  him. — Elsie,  he's  a 
very  heartless  man,  we  both  know;  but  even  he  must 
surely  feel  this  last  blow,  and  his  own  guilt  for  it.  We've 
never  spoken  of  him  together  before;  let's  never  speak  of 
him  together  again.  This  word's  enough.  The  telegram 
shall  be  sent,  and  I  hope  and  trust  it  will  save  him  some- 
thing of  his  self-imposed  misery." 

And  all  the  time  Hugh  Massinger,  in  his  own  carriage, 
was  thinking — not  of  poor  dead  Winifred ;  not  of  remorse, 
or  regret,  or  penitence ;  not  of  his  sin  and  the  mis  • 
chief  it  had  wrought — but  of  Elsie.  The  bay  of  Menton^ 
smiled  lovely  to  his  eyes.  The  crags  of  the  steep  sea- 
ward scarp  on  the  Cap  Martin  side  glistened  and  shone 
in  the  morning  sunlight.  The  rock  of  Monaco  rose  sheer 
like  a  painter's  dream  from  the  sea  in  front  of  him.  And 
as  he  stepped  from  the  carriage  at  Monte  Carlo  station, 
with  the  mountains  above  and  the  gardens  below,  flooded 
by  the  rich  Mediterranean  sunlight,  he  looked  about  him 
at  the  scene  in  pure  aesthetic  delight,  saying  to  himself  in 
his  throbbing  heart  that  the  world  after  all  was  very  beauti- 
ful, and  that  he  might  still  be  happy  at  last  with  Elsie. 


AT  MONTE  CARLO.  877 

CHAPTER  XLIII. 

AT  MONTE  CARLO. 

Hugh  had  not  had  the  carriage  entirely  to  himself  all  the 
way;  a  stranger  got  in  with  him  at  Mentone  station.  But 
so  absorbed  was  Hugh  in  his  own  thoughts  that  he  hardly 
noticed  the  newcomer's  presence.  Full  of  Elsie  and  drunk 
with  joy,  he  had  utterly  forgotten  the  man's  very  exist- 
ence more  than  once.  Crying  and  laughing  by  turns  as 
he  went,  he  must  have  impressed  the  stranger  almost  like 
a  madman.  He  had  smiled  and  frowned  and  chuckled 
to  himself,  exactly  as  if  he  had  been  quite  alone;  and 
though  he  saw  occasionally,  with  a  careless  glee,  that 
the  stranger  leaned  back  nervously  in  his  seat  and  seemed 
1o  shrink  away  from  him,  as  if  in  bodily  fear,  he  scarcely 
troubled  his  head  at  all  about  so  insignificant  and  unim- 
portant a  person.  His  soul  was  all  engrossed  with  Elsie. 
What  was  a  casual  foreigner  to  him,  with  Elsie,  Elsie,  El- 
sie, recovered? 

The  Casino  grounds  were  already  filled  with  loungers 
and  children — gamblers'  children,  in  gay  Parisian  dresses 
---but  the  gaming-rooms  themselves  were  not  yet  open. 
Hugh,  who  had  come  there  half  by  accident,  for  want 
of  somewhere  better  to  go,  and  who  meant  to  return  to 
Sa.n  Remo  by  the  first  train,  strolled  casually  without  any 
thought  to  a  seat  on  the  terrace.  Preoccupied  as  he  was, 
ihe  loveliness  of  the  place  nevertheless  took  him  fairly  by 
surprise.  His  poet's  soul  lay  open  to  its  beauty.  He  had 
never  visited  Monte  Carlo  before;  and  even  now  he  had 
merely  mentioned  the  name  at  random  as  the  first  that 
occurred  to  him  when  he  went  to  take  his  ticket  at  the 
San  Remo  booking-office.  He  had  stumbled  upon  it 
wholly  by  chance.  But  he  was  glad  he  had  come;  it  was 
all  so  lovely.  The  smiling  aspect  of  the  spot  took  his 
breath  away  with  wonder.  And  the  peaceful  air  of  all  that 
blue  bay  soothed  somewhat  his  feverish  excitement  at^the 
momentous  discovery  that  Elsie,  his  Elsie,  was  still  living. 

He  gazed  around  him  with  serene  delight.  Tin's  was 
indeed  a  day  of  joyful  surprises.  The  whole  place  looked 


278  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

more  like  a  scene  in  fairyland  in  full  pantomime  time  than 
like  a  prosaic  bit  of  this  workaday  world  of  ours.  In  front 
lay  the  cobalt-blue  Mediterranean,  broken  on  every  side 
into  a  hundred  tiny  sapphire  inlets.  Behind  him  in  serried 
rank  rose  tier  after  tier  of  Maritime  Alps,  their  solemn 
summits  mysteriously  clouded  in  a  fleecy  haze.  To  the 
left,  on  the  white  rock  that  stretched  upon  the  bay  as  some 
vast  Miltonic  monster  suns  his  huge  length  on  the  broad 
Atlantic, 

How  like  a  gem  the  sea-girt  city 
Of  little  Monaco  basking  glowed! 

He  had  never  before  fully  understood  the  depth  and  beau- 
ty of  those  lines  of  Tennyson's:  he  repeated  them  over 
now  musingly  to  himself,  and  drank  in  their  truthfulness 
with  a  poet's  appreciation.  To  the  right,  the  green  Italian 
shore  faded  away  by  degrees  into  the  purple  mountains 
which  guard  like  sentinels  the  open  mouth  of  the  Gulf 
of  Genoa.  Lovely  by  nature,  that  exquisite  spot — the 
fairest,  perhaps,  in  all  Europe — has  been  made  still  love- 
lier by  all  the  resources  of  human  art.  From  the  water's 
edge,  terraces  of  luscious  tropical  vegetation  rise  one  after 
another  in  successive  steps  toward  the  grand  facade  of  the 
gleaming  Casino,  divided  from  one  another  by  parapets 
of  marble  balustrades,  and  connected  together  from  place 
to  place  by  broad  flights  of  Florentine  staircases.  Fan- 
tastic clusters  of  palms  and  aloes,  their  base  girt  round 
with  rare  exotic  flowers,  thrust  themselves  cunningly  into 
the  foreground  of  every  beautiful  view,  so  that  the  visitor 
looks  out  upon  the  bay  and  the  mountains  through  artistic 
vistas  deftly  arranged  in  the  very  spot  where  a  Tuscan 
painter's  exuberant  fancy  would  have  wished  to  set  them 
for  scenic  effect.  To  Warren  Relf,  to  be  sure,  Monte 
Carlo  seemed  always  too  meretriciously  obtrusive  to  de- 
serve his  pencil ;  but  to  Hugh  Massinger's  more  gorgeous 
oriental  taste  it  revealed  itself  at  once  in  brilliant  colors 
as  a  dream  of  beauty  and  a  glimpse  of  Paradise. 

From  the  bench  where  he  sat,  he  gazed  across  to 
Monaco  past  a  feathery  knot  of  drooping  date  branches: 
he  caught  a  glimpse  of  Bordighera  on  the  other  side 


AT  MONTE  CARLO.  379 

through  a  graceful  framework  of  spreading  dracaenas  and 
quaint  symmetrical  rosettes  of  fan-palms.  The  rock  itself 
delighted  and  rejoiced  his  poet's  soul :  his  fancy,  quickened 
by  that  day's  adventures,  saw  in  it  a  thousand  strange 
similitudes.  Now  it  was  a  huge  petrified  whale,  his  back 
rising  two  hundred  feet  or  more  above  the  water's  edge: 
and  now  it  was  some  gigantic  extinct  saurian,  his  head 
turned  toward  the  open  sea,  and  his  tail  just  lashing  the 
last  swell  of  the  mainland  at  the  narrow  isthmus  where  it 
joined  the  mountains.  Perched  on  its  summit  stood  the 
tiny  town,  with  its  red-tiled  houses  and  clambering  streets, 
and  the  mediaeval  bastions  of  its  petty  Prince's  dispro- 
portioned  palace.  Through  that  clear  Italian  air  he  could 
see  it  all  with  the  utmost  distinctness — the  tall  gray  tower 
with  its  Mauresque  battlements,  the  long  white  facade 
with  its  marble  pillars,  the  tiny  Place  d'Armes  with  its 
rows  of  plane-trees,  its  dozen  brass  cannon,  and  its  mili- 
tary forces  engaged  that  moment  before  his  very  eyes  in 
duly  performing  their  autumn  maneuvers.  For  the  en- 
tire strength  of  the  Monegasque  army  was  deploying  just 
then  before  his  languidly  attentive  vision:  anything  more 
grotesque  than  its  petty  evolutions  he  had  never  before 
beheld — outside  an  opera  bouffe  of  Offenbach's.  Twenty 
fantastically  dressed  soldiers,  of  various  sizes,  about  one- 
half  of  whom  were  apparently  officers,  composed  the  en- 
tire princely  service;  and  they  went  through  their  mock- 
drill  with  a  mixture  of  gravity  and  casual  nonchalance 
which  made  Hugh,  who  observed  them  from  a  distance 
through  his  pocket  field-glass,  smile  in  spite  of  himself 
at  the  ridiculous  ceremonial — it  recalled  so  absurdly 
the  "Grand  Duchess  of  Gerolstein."  He  laughed  a  soft 
little  laugh  below  his  breath:  he  was  blithe  to-day,  for 
Winifred  was  dead,  and  he  had  seen  Elsie. 

He  looked  away  next  to  the  nearer  foreground.  The 
dreamland  of  Monte  Carlo  floated  in  morning  lights  be- 
fore his  enchanted  eyes.  The  great  and  splendid  turreted 
Casino,  the  exquisite  green  lawns  and  gardens,  the  brilliant 
rows  of  shops  and  cafes,  the  picturesque  villas  dotted  up 
and  down  the  smooth  and  English-looking  sward,  the 
Italian  terraces  with  their  marble  steps,  the  glorious  lux 
uriance  and  waving  palm-trees,  massive  agaves,  thick  cms- 


380  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

taring  yucca  blossoms,  and  heavy  breadths  of  tropical 
foliage — all  alike  fired  and  delighted  his  poetical  nature. 
The  bright  blue  of  Mediterranean  seas,  the  dazzling  white 
of  Mediterranean  sunshine,  the  brilliant  russet  of  Mediter- 
ranean roofs,  soothed  and  charmed  his  too  exalted  mood. 
He  needed  repose,  beauty,  and  nature.  He  looked  at  his 
watch  and  consulted  the  little  local  time-table  he  had 
bought  at  San  Remo. — After  all,  why  return  to  that  lonely 
pension  and  to  dead  Winifred  so  very  soon?  It  was  bet- 
ter to  be  here — here,  where  all  was  bright  and  gay  and 
lively.  He  might  sit  in  the  gardens  all  day  long  and  return 
by  the  last  train  to-night  to  Winifred.  No  need  to  report 
himself  now  any  longer.  He  was  free,  free :  he  would  stop 
at  Monte  Carlo. 

Why  leave,  indeed,  that  glorious  spot,  the  loveliest  and 
deadliest  siren  of  our  civilization?  He  felt  his  spirit  easier 
here,  with  those  great  gray  crags  frowning  down  upon  him 
from  above,  and  those  exquisite  bays  smiling  up  at  him 
from  below.  Nature  and  art  had  here  combined  to  woo 
and  charm  him.  It  seemed  like  a  poet's  midsummer 
dream,  crystallized  into  lasting  and  solid  reality  by  some 
gracious  wave  of  Titania's  wand. 

He  murmured  to  himself  those  lines  from  the  "Daisy" — 


Nor  knew  we  well  what  pleased  us  most; 
Not  the  dipt  palm  of  which  they  boast; 

But  distant  color,  happy  hamlet, 
A  molder'd  citadel  on  the  coast; 


Or  tower,  or  high  hill-convent,  seen 
Alight  amid  its  olives  green; 

Or  olive-hoary  cape  in  ocean, 
Or  rosy  blossom  in  hot  ravine. 


Exquisite  lines!  He  looked  across  to  Cap  Martin  and 
understood  them  all.  Then  his  own  verses  on  his  first 
Italian  tour  came  back  with  a  burst  of  similarity  to  his 
memory.  In  his  exultation  and  unnatural  excitement 
he  had  the  audacity  to  compare  them  with  Tennyson's 
own.  Why  might  not  he,  too,  build  at  last  that  mansion 


AT  MOttTE  CARLO.  381 

he  had  talked  about  long,  long  ago,  on  the  summit  of 
Parnassus? 

I  found  it  not,  where  solemn  Alps  and  gray 
Draw  purple  glories  from  the  new-born  day; 

Nor  where  huge  somber  pines  loom  overhanging 
Niagara's  rainbow  spray. 

Nor  in  loud  psalms  whose  palpitating  strain 
Thrills  the  vast  dome  of  Buonarotti's  fane: 

On  canvas  quick  with  Guido's  earnest  passion, 
Or  Titian's  statelier  vein. 

Tennyson  indeed!  Who  prates  about  Tennyson?  Were 
not  his  own  sonorous  round-mouthed  verses  worth  every 
bit  as  much  as  many  Tennyson s?  He  repeated  them 
over  lovingly  to  himself.  The  familiar  ring  intoxicated 
his  soul.  He  was  a  poet  too.  He  would  yet  make  a  for- 
tune, for  himself  and  for  Elsie! 

Echoes,  echoes,  mere  echoes  all  of  them!  But  to  Hugh 
Massinger,  in  his  parental  blindness,  quite  as  good  and 
true  as  their  inspired  originals.  So  the  minor  poet  for- 
ever deceives  himself. 

Guido,  to  be  sure,  he  now  knew  to  be  feeble.  He'd 
outlived  Guido,  and  reached  Botticelli.  Not  that  the  one 
preference  was  any  profounder  or  truer  at  bottom  than 
the  other;  but  fashion  had  changed,  and  he  himself  had 
changed  with  it.  He  wrote  those  verses  long,  long  ago. 
In  those  days  Guido  was  not  yet  exploded.  He  wished 
he  could  find  now  some  good  dissyllabic  early  Italian  name 
(with  the  accent  on  the  first)  that  would  suit  modern  taste 
and  take  the  place  in  the  verse  of  that  too  tell-tale  Guido. 

For  Elsie  was  alive,  and  he  must  be  a  poet  still.  He 
must  build  up  a  fortune  for  himself  and  for  Elsie. 

Somebody  touched  his  elbow  as  he  sat  there.  He 
looked  up,  not  without  some  passing  tinge  of  annoyance. 
What  a  bore  to  be  .discovered!  He  didn't  want  to  be 
disturbed  or  recognized  just  then — at  Monte  Carlo — and 
with  Winifred  lying  dead  on  her  bed  at  San  Remo! 

It  was  a  desultory  London  club  acquaintance — a  mem- 
ber of  the  Savage — and  with  him  was  the  man  who  had 
come  with  Hugh  in  the  train  from  Mentone. 


382  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

"Hullo,  Massinger,"  the  desultory  Savage  observed 
complacently:  "who'd  have  ever  thought  of  meeting  you 
here.  Down  in  the  South  for  the  winter,  or  on  a  visit? 
Come  for  pleasure,  or  is  your  wife  with  you?  White- 
strand  too  much  for  you  in  a  foggy  English  November, 
eh?" 

Hugh  made  up  his  mind  at  once  to  his  course  of  action: 
he  would  not  say  a  single  word  about  Winifred.  "On  a 
visit,"  he  answered,  with  some  slight  embarrassment.  "I 
expect  to  stop  only  a  week  or  two."  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
it  was  not  his  intention  to  remain  very  long  after  Wini- 
fred's funeral.  He  was  in  haste,  as  things  stood,  to  return  t 
to  England — and  Elsie. — "I  came  over  with  your  friend 
from  Mentone  this  morning,  Lock." 

"And  he  took  you  for  a  maniac,  my  dear  boy,"  the  other 
answered  with  a  quiet  smile.  "I've  duly  explained  to  him 
that  you  are  not  mad,  most  noble  Massinger;  you're 
only  a  poet.  The  terms,  though  nearly,  are  not  quite 
synonymous."  Then  he  added  in  French:  "Let  me  in- 
troduce you  now  to  one  another.  M.  le  Lieutenant  Fedor 
Raffalevsky,  of  the  Russian  navy." 

M.  Raffalevsky  bowed  politely.  "I  fear,  Monsieur,"  he 
said,  with  a  courtly  smile,  "I  caused  you  some  slight  sur- 
prise and  discomfort  by  my  peculiar  demeanor  in  the 
train  this  morning. — To  tell  you  the  truth,  your  attitude 
discomposed  me.  I  was  coming  to  Monte  Carlo  to  join 
in  the  play,  and  I  carried  no  less  a  sum  for  the  purpose 
than  three  hundred  thousand  francs  about  my  body.  Not 
knowing  I  had  to  deal  with  a  person  of  honor,  I  felt 
somewhat  nervous,  you  may  readily  conceive,  as  to  your 
muttered  remarks  and  apparent  abstraction.  Figure  to 
yourself  my  situation.  So  much  money  makes  one  nat- 
urally fanciful !  Monsieur,  I  trust,  will  have  the  goodness 
to  forgive  me." 

"To  say  the  truth,"  Hugh  answered  frankly,  "I  was  so 
much  absorbed  in  my  own  thoughts  that  I  scarcely  no- 
ticed any  little  hesitation  you  may  have  happened  to  ex- 
press in  your  looks  and  manner.  Three  hundred  thou- 
sand francs  is  no  doubt  a  very  large  sum.  Why,  it's 
twelve  thousand  pounds  sterling — isn't  it,  Lock? — You 
mean  to  try  your  luck,  then,  en  gros,  Monsieur?" 


AT  MONTE  CARLO.  388 

The  Russian  smiled.  "For  once,,"  he  answered,  nod- 
ding his  head  good-humoredly.  "I  have  a  system,  I  be- 
lieve; an  infallible  system.  I'm  a  mathematician  myself 
by  taste  and  habit.  I've  invented  a  plan  for  tricking  for- 
tune— the  only  safe  one  ever  yet  discovered." 

Hugh  shook  his  head  almost  mechanically.  "All  sys- 
tems alike  are  equally  bad,"  he  replied  in  a  politely  care- 
less tone.  Gambler  as  he  had  always  been  by  nature,  he 
had  too  much  common-sense  to  believe  in  martingales. 
"The  bank's  bound  to  beat  you  in  the  long  run,  you 
know.  It  has  the  deepest  purse,  and  must  win  in  the 
end,  if  you  go  on  long  enough." 

The  Russian's  face  wore  a  calm  expression  of  superior 
wisdom.  "I  know  better,"  he  answered  quietly.  "I've 
worked  for  years  at  the  doctrine  of  chances.  I've  calcu- 
lated the  odds  to  ten  places  of  decimals.  If  I  hadn't,  do 
you  think  I'd  risk  three  hundred  thousand  francs  on  the 
mere  turn  of  a  wretched  roulette  table?" 

The  doors  of  the  Casino  were  now  open,  and  players 
were  beginning  to  crowd  the  gambling  rooms.  "Let's 
go  in  and  watch  him,"  Lock  suggested  in  English.  "There 
can  be  no  particular  harm  in  looking  on.  I'm  not  a 
player  myself  like  you,  Massinger;  but  I  want  to  see 
whether  this  fellow  really  wins  or  loses.  He  believes  in 
his  own  system  most  profoundly  I  observe.  He's  a  very 
nice  chap,  the  Paymaster  of  the  Russian  Mediterranean 
squadron.  I  picked  him  up  at  the  Cercle  Nautique  at 
Nice  last  week;  and  he  and  I  have  been  going  every- 
where in  my  yacht  ever  since  together." 

"All  right,"  Hugh  answered,  with  the  horrible  new-born 
careless  glee  of  his  recent  emancipation.  "I  don't  mind 
twopence  what  I  do  to-day.  Vogue  la  galere!  Fm^game 
for  anything,  from  pitch-and-toss  to  manslaughter.' 
never  suspected  himself  how  true  those  casual  words  of 
the  stock  slang  expression  were  soon  to  become.  Pitch- 
and-toss  first,  and  afterward  manslaughter.  t 

They  strolled  round  together  to  the  front  of  the  Casino, 
that  stately  building  in  the  gaudiest  Hausmanmzed  Pa- 
risian style,  planted  plump  down  with  grotesque  incon- 
gruity beneath  the  lofty  crags  of  the  Maritime  Alps, 
palace  of  sin  faces  a  large  and  handsome  open  square,  with 


384  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

greensward  and  fountains  and  parterres  of  flowers;  and 
all  around  stand  coquettish  shops,  laid  temptingly  out 
with  bonnets  and  jewelry  and  aesthetic  products,  for  peo- 
ple who  win  largely  disburse  freely,  and  many  ladies  hover 
about  the  grounds,  with  fashionable  dresses  and  shady 
antecedents,  by  no  means  slow  to  share  the  good  fortune 
of  the  lucky  and  all  too  generous  hero  of  the  day.  Hugh 
mounted  the  entrance  staircase  with  the  rest  of  the  crowd, 
and  pushed  through  the  swinging  glass  doors  of  the 
Casino.  Within,  they  came  upon  the  large  and  spacious 
vestibule,  its  roof  supported  by  solid  marble  and  porphyry 
pillars.  Presentation  of  their  cards  secured  them  the  right 
of  entry  to  the  salles  de  jeu,  for  everything  is  free  at  Monte 
Carlo — except  the  tables.  You  may  go  in  and  out  of  the 
rooms  as  you  please,  and  enjoy  for  nothing — so  long  as 
you  are  not  fool  enough  to  play — the  use  of  two  hundred 
"European  newspapers,  and  the  music  of  a  theater,  where 
a  splendid  band  discourses  hourly  to  all  comers  the  en- 
livening strains  of  Strauss  and  of  Gungl.  But  all  that 
is  the  merest  prelude.  The  play  itself,  which  forms  the 
solid  core  of  the  entire  entertainment,  takes  place  in  the 
gambling  saloons  on  the  left  of  the  Casino. 

Furnished  with  their  indispensable  little  ticket  of  intro- 
duction, the  three  newcomers  entered  the  rooms,  and 
took  their  place  tentatively  by  one  of  the  tables.  The 
Russian,  selecting  a  seat  at  once,  addressed  himself  to  the 
task  like  one  well  accustomed  to  systematic  gambling. 
Hugh  and  his  acquaintance  Lock  stood  idly  behind,  to 
watch  the  outcome  of  his  infallible  method. 

And  all  the  time,  alone  at  San  Remo,  Winifred's  body 
lay  on  the  solitary  bed  of  death,  attended  only  at  long 
intervals  by  the  waiting-women  and  landlady  of  the  shab- 
by pension. 


"MAKE  TOUR  GAME!"  3*5 

CHAPTER  XLIV. 

"LADIES    AND    GENTLEMEN,    MAKE    YOUR   GAME!" 

Though  play  had  only  just  begun  when  Hugh  and  his 
companions  entered  the  saloon,  the  rooms  were  already 
pretty  well  crowded  with  regular  visitors,  who  came  early 
to  secure  their  accustomed  seats,  and  who  leaned  forward 
with  big  rolls  of  gold  piled  high  in  columns  on  the  table 
before  them,  marking  down  with  a  dot  on  their  tablets  the 
winning  numbers,  and  staking  their  twenty  or  thirty 
napoleons  with  mechanical  calmness  on  every  turn  of  that 
fallacious  whirligig.  Hugh  had  often  heard  or  read  sen- 
sational descriptions  of  the  eagerness  depicted  upon  every 
face,  the  anxious  gaze,  the  rapt  attention,  the  obvious  fas- 
cination of  the  game  for  its  votaries ;  but  what  struck  him 
rather  on  the  first  blush  of  it  all  was  the  exact  opposite: 
the  stolid  indifference  with  which  men  and  women  alike, 
inured  to  the  varying  chances  of  the  board,  lost  or  won 
a  couple  of  dozen  pounds  or  so  on  each  jump  of  the  pea, 
as  though  it  were  a  matter  of  the  supremest  unconcern  to 
them  in  their  capacity  of  gamblers  whether  they  or  the 
bank  happened  to  take  up  each  particular  little  heap  of 
money.  They  seemed,  indeed,  to  be  mostly  rich  and 
blase  people,  suffering  from  a  chronic  plethora  of  the 
purse,  who  could  afford  to  throw  away  their  gold  like 
water,  and  who  threw  it  away  carelessly  out  of  pure  wan- 
tonness, for  the  sake  of  the  small  modicum  of  passing 
excitement  yielded  by  the  uncertainty  to  their  jaded 
palates. 

One  player  in  particular  Hugh  watched  closely — an 
austere-looking  man  with  the  air  and  carriage  of  a  rural 
dean — to  detect  if  possible  some  trace  of  emotion  in  his 
eyes  or  muscles.  He  could  observe  none ;  the  man's  fea- 
tures were  rigid  as  if  carved  in  stone.  A  slight  twitching 
of  the  fingers  from  time  to  time  perhaps  faintly  betrayed 
internal  excitement ;  but  that  was  all.  The  clear-cut  face 
and  thin  lips  moved  no  more  than  the  busts  of  those 
Elizabethan  Meyseys,  hewn  in  marble  or  carved  in  wood, 
in  the  cold  chancel  at  sand-swept  Whitestrand. 


386  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

Nevertheless,  he  remarked  with  surprise  from  the  very 
first  moment  that  even  at  that  early  hour  of  the  morning, 
when  the  day's  work  had  hardly  yet  got  well  under  way, 
the  rooms,  though  large  and  lofty,  were  past  all  belief  hot 
and  close,  doubtless  from  the  strange  number  of  feverish 
human  hearts  and  lungs,  all  throbbing  and  panting  their 
suppressed  excitement,  in  that  single  Casino,  and  warm- 
ing the  air  with  their  internal  fires.  He  raised  his  eyes 
and  glanced  for  a  moment  around  the  saloon.  It  was 
spacious  and  handsome,  after  its  own  gaudy  fashion,  richly 
decorated  in  the  Mauresque  style  of  the  Spanish  Alhambra, 
though  with  far  less  taste  and  harmony  of  color  than  in 
the  restorations  to  which  his  eye  had  been  long  familiar- 
ized in  London  and  Sydenham.  At  Monte  Carlo,  to  say 
the  truth,  a  certain  subdued  tinge  of  vulgar  garishness 
just  mars  the  native  purity  of  the  style  into  perfect  accord 
with  the  nature  and  purposes  of  that  temple  of  Mammon 
in  his  vilest  avatar. 

Hugh,  however,  for  his  part,  had  no  scruples  in  the 
matter  of  gambling.  He  gazed  up  and  down  at  the  ten 
or  twelve  roulette  tables  that  crowded  the  salles  de  jeu, 
with  the  utmost  complacency.  He  liked  to  play,  and  it 
diverted  him  to  watch  it,  especially  when  the  man  he  meant 
to  observe  was  the  propounder  of  a  new  and  infallible 
system.  Infallible  systems  are  always  interesting:  they 
collapse  with  a  crash — amusing  to  everybody  except  their 
propounder.  He  bent  his  eyes  closely  upon  the  hands 
of  the  Russian,  who  had  now  pulled  out  his  roll  of  gold 
and  silver,  and  was  eagerly  beginning  to  back  his  chosen 
numbers,  doubtless  with  the  blind  and  stupid  confidence 
of  the  infatuated  system-monger. 

Raffalevsky,  however,  played  a  cautious  opening.  He 
started  modestly  with  four  five-franc  pieces,  distributed 
about  on  a  distinct  plan,  and  each  of  them  staked  on  a 
separate  number.  The  five-franc  piece,  in  fact,  is  the 
minimum  coin  permitted  to  show  its  face  on  those  aristo- 
cratic tables;  and  six  thousand  francs  is  the  maximum 
sum  which  the  bank  allows  any  one  player  to  hazard  on 
a  single  twist  of  the  roulette :  between  these  extreme  lim- 
its, all  possible  systems  must  needs  confine  themselves,  so 
that  the  common  martingale  of  doubling  the  stakes  at  each 


"MAKE  YOUR  GAME!"  387 

unsuccessful  throw  becomes  here  practically  impossible. 
Raffalevsky 's  play  had  been  carefully  calculated.  Hugh, 
who  was  already  well  versed  in  the  mysteries  of  roulette, 
could  see  at  a  glance  that  the  Russian  had  really  a  method 
in  his  madness.  He  was  working  on  strict  mathematical 
principles.  Sometimes  he  divided  or  decreased  his  stake ; 
sometimes,  at  a  bound,  he  trebled  or  quadrupled  it.  Some- 
times he  plunged  on  a  single  number ;  sometimes  for  sev- 
eral turns  together  he  steadily  backed  either  red  or  black, 
pair  or  impair.  But  on  the  whole,  by  hap  or  cunning, 
he  really  seemed  to  be  winning  rapidly.  His  sustained 
success  made  Hugh  more  anxious  than  ever  to  watch  his 
play.  It  was  clear  he  had  invented  a  genuine  system. 
Might  it  be  after  all,  as  he  said,  an  infallible  one? 

If  only  Hugh  could  find  it  out!  He  must,  he  would 
marry  Elsie.  How  grand  to  marry  her,  a  rich  man !  He 
would  love  to  lay  at  Elsie's  feet  a  fortune  worthy  of  his 
beautiful  Elsie. 

Things  were  all  changed  now.  He  had  something  to 
live,  to  work,  to  gamble  for!  If  only  he  could  say  to 
his  recovered  Elsie:  "Take  me,  rich,  famous,  great — take 
me,  and  Whitestrand,  no  longer  sand-swept.  I  lay  it  all 
in  your  lap  for  your  gracious  acceptance — these  piles  of 
gold — these  heaps  of  coins!"  But  he  had  nothing,  noth- 
ing, save  the  few  napoleons  he  carried  about  him.  If  he 
had  but  the  Russian's  twelve  thousand  pounds  now!  he 
would  play  and  win — win  a  fortune  at  a  stroke  for  his 
darling  Elsie. 

Fired  with  the  thought,  he  watched  Raffalevsky  more 
closely  than  ever.  In  time,  he  began  to  perceive  by  de- 
grees upon  what  principle  the  money  was  so  regularly  lost 
and  won.  It  was  a  good  principle,  mathematically  cor- 
rect. Hugh  worked  it  out  hastily  on  the  back  of  an  en- 
velope. Yes,  in  one  hundred  and  twenty  chances  out 
of  one  hundred  and  thirty-seven,  a  man  ought  to  win 
ten  louis  a  turn,  against  seven  lost,  on  an  average  reckon- 
ing. At  last,  Raffalevsky,  after  several  good  hazards, 
laid  down  five  louis  boldly  upon  24.  Hugh  touched  his 
shoulder  with  a  gentle  hand.  "Wrong,"  he  murmured 
in  French.  "You  make  a  mistake  there.  You  abandon 
your  principle.  You  ought  to  have  backed  27  this  time." 


388  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

The  Russian  looked  back  at  him  with  an  angry  smile;  so 
slight  a  scratch  at  once  brought  out  the  Tartar.  "Back 
it  yourself,  then,  Monsieur,"  he  said  sullenly.  "I  make 
my  own  game. — Pray,  don't  interrupt  me.  If  your  calcu- 
lations go  so  very  deep,  put  your  own  money  down,  and 
try  your  luck  against  me.  My  principles,  when  I  first 
discovered  them,  were  not  worked  out  on  the  back  of  an 
envelope." 

The  gibe  offended  Hugh.  In  a  second  he  saw  that  the 
fellow  was  wrong:  he  was  misinterpreting  the  nature  of 
his  own  disco  very.  He  had  neglected  one  obvious  ele- 
ment of  the  problem.  The  error  was  mathematical: 
Hugh  snapped  at  it  mentally  with  his  keen  perception — 
he  had  taken  a  first  in  mathematics  at  Oxford — and  noted 
at  once  that  if  the  Russian  pursued  his  present  course  for 
many  turns  together  he  was  certain  before  long  to  go 
under  hopelessly.  For  the  space  of  one  deep  breath  he 
hesitated  and  held  back.  What  was  the  use  of  gambling 
with  no  capital  to  go  upon?  Then,  more  for  the  sake  of 
proving  himself  right  than  of  winning  money,  he  dived 
into  his  pocket  with  a  sudden  resolution,  and  drawing  forth 
five  napoleons  from  his  scanty  purse,  laid  them  without 
a  word  on  27,  and  awaited  patiently  the  result  of  his 
action. 

"The  game  is  made,"  the  croupier  called  out  as  Hugh 
withdrew  his  hand.  After  that  warning  signal,  no  stakes 
can  be  further  received  or  altered.  Whir-r-r  went  the 
roulette.  The  pea  spun  round  with  whizzing  speed. 
Hugh  looked  on,  all  eager,  in  a  fever  of  suspense.  He 
half  regretted  he  had  backed  27.  He  was  sure  to  lose 
The  chances,  after  all,  were  so  enormous  against  him. 
Thirty-six  to  one!  If  you  win  it's  a  fluke.  What  a  fool 
he  had  been  to  run  the  risk  of  making  himself  look  small 
in  this  gratuitous  way  before  the  cold  eyes  of  that  unfeel- 
ing Russian! 

He  knew  he  was  right,  of  course:  27  was  the  system. 
But  a  sensible  system  never  hangs  upon  a  single  throw. 
It  depends  upon  a  long  calculation  of  chances.  You  must 
let  one  risk  balance  another.  Raffalevsky  had  twelve 
thousand  pounds  to  fall  back  upon.  If  he  failed  once,  to 
him  that  didn't  matter:  he  could  go  on  still  and  recoup 


"MAKE  f  OUft  GAME!"  389 

himself  in  the  end  by  means  of  the  system.  Only  under 
such  circumstances  of  a  full  purse  can  any  method  of 
gambling  ever  by  any  possibility  be  worth  anything. 
Broken  reeds  at  the  best,  even  for  a  Rothschild,  they 
must  almost  necessarily  pierce  the  hand  that  leans  upon 
them  if  it  ventures  to  try  them  on  a  petty  scrap  of  pocket 
capital.  And  Hugh's  capital  was  grotesquely  scrappy  for 
such  a  large  venture — he  had  only  some  seventy-five 
pounds  about  him. 

How  swift  is  thought,  and  how  long  a  time  it  seemed 
before  the  pea  jumped!  He  had  reasoned  out  all  this, 
and  a  thousandfold  more,  in  his  own  mind  with  lightning 
speed  while  that  foolish  wheel  was  still  whirling  and  spin- 
ning. If  he  won  at  all,  it  could  only  be  by  a  rare  stroke 
of  fickle  fortune.  Thirty-six  to  one  were  the  odds  against 
him!  And  if  he  lost,  he  must  either  leave  off  at  once,  or 
else,  in  accordance  with  the  terms  of  the  system,  stake 
ten  louis  next  turn  on  14,  or  nine  louis  on  odd  or  even. 
At  that  rate,  his  poor  little  capital  would  soon  be  ex- 
hausted. How  he  longed  for  Raffalevsky's  twelve  thou- 
sand to  draw  upon!  He  would  feel  so  small  if  27  lost. 
And  if  there  was  anything  on  earth  that  Hugh  Massinger 
hated  it  was  feeling  small :  the  sense  of  ignominy,  and  its 
opposite,  the  feeling  of  personal  dignity,  were  deeply 
rooted  in  the  very  base  and  core  of  his  selfish  nature. 

At  last  the  pea  jumped.  A  breathless  second!  The 
croupier  looked  over  at  it  and  watched  it  fall.  "Vingt- 
sept,"  he  cried  in  his  stereotyped  tone.  Hugh's  heart 
leaped  up  with  a  sudden  wild  bound.  The  fever  of  play 
had  seized  on  him  now.  He  had  won  at  a  stroke — a 
hundred  and  seventy-five  louis. 

Here  was  a  capital  indeed  upon  which  to  begin.  He 
would  back  his  own  system  with  this  against  Raffalevsky's. 
Or  rather,  he  would  back  Raffalevsky's  discovery,  as 
rightly  apprehended  and  worked  out  by  himself,  against 
Raffalevsky's  discovery  as  wrongly  applied  and  distorted 
through  an  essential  error  of  detail  by  its  original  inventor. 

It  was  system  pitted  against  system  now.  The  croupier 
raked  in  the  scattered  gold  heaped  on  the  various  caba- 
listic numbers,  squares,  and  diamonds — and  amongst 
them,  Raffalevsky's  five  napoleons  upon  24.  Then  he 


aw  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

paid  the  lucky  players  their  gains;  counting  out  three 
thousand  five  hundred  francs  with  practised  ease,  and 
handing  them  to  Hugh,  who  was  one  among  the  princi- 
pal winners  by  that  particular  turn.  In  two  minutes  more, 
the  board  was  cleared ;  the  wooden  cue  had  hauled  in  all 
the  bank's  receipts;  the  fortunate  players  had  added  their 
winnings  to  the  heap  before  them ;  and  all  was  ready  for  a 
further  venture.  "Messieurs  et  mesdames,  faites  le  jeu," 
the  harsh  voice  of  the  croupier  cried  mechanically.  The 
players  laid  down  their  stakes  once  more;  the  croupier 
waited  the  accustomed  interval.  "Le  jeu  est  fait,  rien  ne 
va  plus,"  he  cried  at  last;  and  the  pea  again  went  buzzing 
and  whizzing.  Hugh  was  backing  his  system  this  time 
on  the  regular  rule:  three  louis  on  the  left-hand  row  of 
numbers. 

He  lost.  That  was  but  a  small  matter,  of  course.  He 
had  won  to  begin  with;  and  a  stroke  of  luck  at  the  first 
outset  is  responsible  for  the  greater  part  of  the  most 
reckless  playing.  Time  after  time  he  staked  and  played — 
staked  and  played — staked  and  played  again,  sometimes 
losing,  sometimes  winning;  but  on  the  whole,  the  system, 
as  he  had  anticipated,  proved  fairly  trustworthy.  The 
delirium  of  play  had  taken  full  possession  of  him,  body 
and  soul,  by  this  time.  He  was  piling  up  gold;  piling  it 
fast;  how  fast,  he  never  stopped  to  think  or  count: 
enough  for  him  that  the  system  won ;  as  long  as  it  won, 
what  waste  of  time  at  a  critical  moment  to  stop  and  reckori 
the  extent  of  his  fortune. 

He  only  knew  that  every  now  and  then  he  thrust  a 
fresh  handful  of  gold  notes  into  his  pocket — for  Elsie — 
and  went  on  playing  with  feverish  eagerness  with  the 
residue  of  his  winnings  left  upon  the  table. 

By  two  o'clock,  however,  he  began  to  get  hungry.  This 
sort  of  excitement  takes  it  rapidly  out  of  a  man.  Lock  had 
disappeared  from  the  scene  long  since.  He  wanted  some- 
body to  go  and  feed  with.  So  he  leaned  over  and  whis- 
pered casually  to  Raffalevsky:  "Shall  we  turn  out  now 
and  take  a  mouthful  or  two  of  lunch  together?" 

Raffalevsky  looked  back  at  him  with  a  pale  face.  "As 
you  will,"  he  said  wearily.  "I'm  tired  of  this  play.  Losses, 


"MAKE  YOUR  GAME!"  391 

losses  all  along  the  line.  The  system  breaks  down  here 
and  there,  I  find,  in  actual  practice." 

So  Hugh  had  observed  with  a  placid  smile  for  the  last 
hour  or  two. 

They  left  the  tables,  and  strolled  across  the  square  to  the 
stately  portals  of  the  Hotel  de  Paris.  Hugh  was  in  ex- 
cellent spirits  indeed.  "Permit  me  to  constitute  myself 
the  host,  Monsieur,"  he  said  with  his  courtliest  air  to 
Raffalevsky.  He  had  won  heavily  now,  and  was  in  a 
humor  on  all  grounds  to  spend  his  winnings  with  princely 
magnificence. 

The  Russian  bowed.  "You  are  very  kind,  monsieur," 
he  answered  with  a  smile.  Then  he  added,  half  apologeti- 
cally, at  the  end  of  a  pause :  "And,  after  all,  it  was  my  own 
system." 

The  carte  was  tempting,  and  money  was  cheap — cheaper 
than  in  London.  Hugh  ordered  the  most  sumptuous 
and  recherche  of  luncheons,  with  wine  to  match,  on  a 
millionaire  scale,  and  they  sat  down  together  at  the  lux- 
urious tables  of  that  lordly  restaurant.  While  they  waited 
for  their  red  mullet,  Hugh  pulled  out  a  stray  handful  of 
notes  and  gold  and  began  to  count  up  the  extent  of  his 
winnings.  He  trembled  himself  when  he  saw  to  how 
very  large  a  sum  the  total  amounted.  He  had  pocketed  no 
less  in  that  short  time  than  fourteen  hundred  louis!  Fools 
that  plod  and  toil  and  moil  in  London  for  a  long,  long 
year  upon  half  that  pittance!  How  he  pitied  and  despised 
them!  In  three  brief  hours,  by  the  aid  of  his  system,  he 
had  won  off-hand  fourteen  hundred  louis! 

He  mentioned  the  sum  of  his  winnings  with  bated 
breath  to  the  unsympathetic  Russian.  Raffalevsky  bit  his 
lip  with  undisguised  jealousy.  "And  I,"  he  said  curtly,  in 
a  cold  voice,  "have  dropped  sixteen  hundred." 

"It's  wonderful  with  what  placid  depths  of  heroism 
the  winners  can  endure  the  losses  of  the  losers.  ''Never 
mind,  my  friend,"  Hugh  answered  back  cheerily.  "For- 
tune always  takes  a  turn  in  the  long  run.  Her  wheel 
will  alter.  You'll  win  soon.  And  besides,  you  know, 
you  have  an  infallible  system." 

"It's  the  cursed  system  that  seems  to  have  betrayed  me," 
the  Russian  blurted  back  with  a  savage  outburst  of  un- 


5&  .   THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

checked  temper.  "It  worked  out  so  well  on  paper,  some- 
how; but  on  these  precious  tables,  with  their  turns  and 
their  evolutions,  something  unexpected  is  always  bobbing 
up  to  spoil  and  prevent  my  legitimate  triumph.  Would 
you  believe  it,  now,  last  turn  but  one,  and  the  turn  before 
it,  I  had  calculated  seven  hundred  and  twenty-two  distinct 
chances  all  in  my  favor  to  a  miserable  solitary  one  against 
me:  and  not  one  of  the  seven  hundred  and  twenty -two 
good  combinations  ever  turned  up  at  all,  but  just  the  one 
beastly  unlucky  conjunction  that  made  against  me  and 
ruined  my  speculations.  You  might  play  for  seven  hun- 
dred and  twenty-two  turns  on  an  average  again  without 
that  ever  happening  a  second  time  to  confound  you." 

At  the  table  behind  them,  a  philosophically  minded 
Frenchman  of  the  doctrinaire  type — a  close-shaven  old 
gentleman  with  an  official  face,  white  hair,  and  an  unim- 
peachable necktie — was  discoursing  aloud  to  a  friend  be- 
side him  of  the  folly  of  gambling.  "I'm  not  going  to 
moralize,"  he  remarked  aloud,  in  that  very  clear  and  audi- 
ble tone  which  the  doctrinaire  Frenchman  generally 
adopts  when  he  desires  to  air  his  own  private  opinions; 
"for  Monte  Carlo's  hardly  the  place,  let  us  admit,  for  a 
deliberate  conference.  But  on  the  whole,  viewed  merely 
as  betting,  it's  a  peculiarly  bad  way  of  risking  your  mon- 
ey. Imagine,  for  example,  that  you  want  to  gamble; 
there  are  many  other  much  better  and  fairer  methods  of 
gambling  than  this.  Figure  to  yourself,  first,  that  you 
and  I  play  rouge  et  noir  by  a  turn  of  the  cards  at  a  louis 
a  cut:  eh  bien,  we  stand  to  lose  or  win  on  an  absolute 
equality  one  with  the  other.  That  is  just,  so.  We  back 
our  luck  at  no  special  disadvantage.  But  figure  to  your- 
self, on  the  contrary,  that  we  play  against  a  bank  which 
gives  itself  one  extra  chance  in  its  own  favor  out  of  every 
thirty-seven,  and,  understand  well,  WTC  are  backing  our 
luck  against  unequal  odds,  so  that  in  the  long  run  the 
bank  must  win  from  us.  You  have  only  to  play  so  many 
times  running  on  an  average  in  order  to  contribute  with 
almost  unerring  certainty  one  napoleon  toward  the  private 
income  of  the  Prince  of  Monaco.  For  me,  I  do  not  care 
for  his  Serenity:  I  prefer  to  spend  my  napoleon  on  a  good 
dinner,  and  to  let  the  fools  who  frequent  the  Casino  keep 


"MAKE  YOUR  OAMB!"  393 

* 

up  the  music  and  the  gardens  and  the  theater  for  my 
private  amusement." 

From  his  seat  in  front,  Hugh  thoroughly  despised  that 
close-shaven  Frenchman  to  the  bottom  of  his  soul.  Mean 
wretch,  who  could  thus  coldly  calculate  the  chances  of 
loss,  when  he  himself  had  just  won  at  one  glorious  sitting 
fourteen  hundred  gold  louis!  He  turned  round  in  his 
chair,  flushed  red  with  success,  and  flung  the  fact,  as  it 
were,  full  in  front  of  the  Frenchman's  doctrinaire  folding 
eye-glasses. 

The  philosopher  smiled.  "Monsieur,"  he  answered  with 
perfect  good-humor,  and  an  olive  poised  on  the  tip  of  his 
fork,  "you  are  one  of  the  few  whose  special  good  fortune, 
occasionally  realized,  alone  attracts  the  thousands  of  un- 
fortunate pigeons.  Every  now  and  then,  in  effect,  one 
hears  at  Monte  Carlo  of  people  who  at  a  few  strokes  of  the 
wheel  have  won  for  themselves  prodigious  fortunes. 
But  then,  one  must  remember  that  the  chances  are  always 
rather  against  you  than  for  you,  and  above  all  that  the 
longest  purse  has  always  the  advantage.  A  few  people 
win  very  large  sums;  a  few  more  win  moderate  sums; 
a  good  many  win  a  little ;  and  by  far  the  most  part — say 
two  out  of  three — lose,  and  often  lose  heavily.  Voila 
tout!  We  have  there  the  Iliad  of  gambling  in  a  nutshell. 
You  have  been  lucky  enough  yourself  to  win;  that  is 
well. — And  Monsieur  your  friend  there — pray,  what  has 
he  done  also?" 

"Lost  sixteen  hundred,"  the  Russian  burst  out  with  a 
sulky  nod. 

The  close-shaven  gentleman  smiled  pleasantly.  So  the 
bank  gains  two  hundred  on  the  pair,  it  seems,"  he  mur- 
mured with  a  faint  shrug.— "Thank  you,  Monsieur:  you 
prove  my  point.  If  ever  I  should  be  seized  with  a  desire 
for  gambling,  which  Heaven  forbid,  I  shall  gamble  where 
the  chances  that  make  for  me  are  at  least  as  good  as  the 
chances  that  tell  against  me.  I  dislike  a  game  where  I 
must  lose  if  I  keep  on  long  enough.  I  have  no  desire 
to  increase  the  revenues  of  that  amiable  crowned  head, 
the  Prince  of  Monaco." 

Hugh's  contempt  for  that  man  knew  no  bounds.  A 
mere  wretched  purblind  political  economist,  no  doubt, 


394  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

reasoning  and  calculating  on  a  matter  like  that,  when  he, 
Hugh,  with  his  successful  boldness,  had  a  thousand 
pounds,  neatly  tucked  away  in  gold  and  notes  in  his  own 
trousers'  pockets!  Thus  do  fools  fling  away  fortunes!  He 
laughed  to  scorn  those  London  lawyers  and  money-lend- 
ers. Here  was  the  true  Eldorado  indeed;  here  a  genuine 
Pactolus  flowed  full  and  free  through  a  Tom  Tiddler's 
ground  of  unimaginable  wealth,  unchecked  in  its  course 
by  seven  per  cent,  or  by  mean  barriers  of  collateral  securi- 
ty. He  would  soon  be  rich — rich,  rich,  for  Elsie. 


CHAPTER  XLV. 

PACTOLUS  INDEED! 

After  a  sumptuous  lunch,  they  returned  to  the  rooms.  To 
the  rooms! — say  rather  to  the  treasure-house  of  Croesus! 
On  the  steps,  they  passed  a  young  English  lad,  who  looked 
barely  twenty.  "Don't  tell  mamma  I  played,"  he  was 
saying  to  a  companion  ruefully  as  they  passed  him.  "She'd 
break  her  heart  over  it,  if  she  ever  knew  it."  But  Hugh 
had  no  time  to  notice  in  passing  the  pathos  of  the  remark. 
Who  could  bother  his  head  about  trifles  like  that,  forsooth, 
when  he's  coining  his  hundreds  on  the  turn  of  a  roulette 
table? 

He  meant  to  win  hundreds — thousands — now.  He 
meant  to  build  up  a  colossal  fortune — for  Elsie,  for  Elsie. 

These  years  had  taught  him  a  certain  sort  of  selfish 
unselfishness.  It  was  no  longer  for  his  own  use  that  he 
wanted  money;  he  longed  to  lay  it  all  down  at  Elsie's 
feet.  She  was  his  Queen :  he  would  do  her  homage. 

The  tables  had  filled  up  three  files  deep  with  players 
by  this  time.  Hugh  had  hard  work  to  edge  his  way 
dexterously  in  between  them:  the  Russian  followed  with 
equal  difficulty.  But  a  croupier,  recognizing  them,  mo- 
tioned both  with  a  courteous  wave  of  his  hand  to  two 
vacant  chairs  he  had  kept  on  purpose.  Men  who  win — 
or  lose — large  sums  command  respect  instinctively  at 
Monte  Carlo.  Hugh  and  the  Russian  had  each  qualified, 
on  one  or  other  of  these  opposite  grounds,  for  a  seat  at 
the  table.  Hugh's  turn  by  the  system,  however,  had  not 


PACTOLUS  INDEED.  395 

yet  come  on :  he  had  to  wait,  according  to  his  self-imposed 
law,  till  one  of  the  four  middle  numbers  should  happen  to 
turn  up  before  he  again  began  staking.  So  he  gazed 
around  with  placid  interest  for  some  minutes  at  his  crowd- 
ed fellow-players.  Success  excites  some  nervous  heads; 
it  always  made  Hugh  Massinger  placid.  There  they  sat 
and  stood,  not  less,  he  thought,  than  five  hundred  busy 
men  and  women,  fifty  or  sixty  jostling  one  another  round 
each  separate  board,  playing  away  as  if  for  dear  life,  and 
risking  fortunes  giddily  on  the  jump  of  the  pea  in  that 
meaningless  little  whirligig  of  a  spinning  roulette  wheel. 
She  was  a  German,  he  conjectured,  that  flat-faced  impas- 
sive lady  opposite,  gambling  cautiously  but  very  high, 
and  laden  on  her  neck  and  arms  and  ears  with  an  atrocious 
dead-weight  of  vulgarly  expensive  jewelry.  Then  the  bold 
but  handsome  young  girl  at  her  side,  with  the  exquisite 
bonnet  and  well-cut  mantle,  and  the  remarkably  full- 
blown Pennsylvanian  twang,  must  surely  by  her  voice  be 
an  American  citizen.  By  her  voice  and  by  her  play;  for 
she  risked  her  broad  gold  hundred-franc  pieces  with  true- 
born  American  recklessness  of  consequence.  And  there, 
a  little  way  off,  stands  a  newly  married  Englishman,  with 
his  pretty  small  bride  nestling  close  up  to  him  in  wifely 
expostulation.  Hugh  could  even  catch  snatches  of  their 
whispered  colloquy:  "Don't,  George,  don't."— "Just  this 
once,  Nellie:  a  napoleon  on  red." — Black  wins:  he  loses. 
— H'm,  the  chances  there  are  only  even.  If  I  win  next 
time,  I  get  nothing  but  my  own  napoleon  back  again.  I'll 
go  it  one  better  now:  a  nap  on  a  column.  Then  if  I  win, 
you  see,  I  get  four  times  my  stake,  Nellie." — Lost  again ! 
How  fast  they  rake  it  in!— "Well,  then,  I'll  back  a  number 
this  time."— "Oh,  but,  George  dear,  you  know  you  really 
can't  afford  it." — George,  unabashed  by  her  wifely  reproof, 
plumps  down  his  napoleon  on  32.  Whirr  goes  the  rou- 
lette.— "Dix-huit,"  cries  the  croupier,  and  sweeps  in  the 
gold  with  a  careless  curve  of  his  greedy  hand-rake.  Poor 
souls!  In  his  heart,  Hugh  Massinger,  was  genuinely  sor- 
ry for  them.  If  only  they  had  known  his  infallible  system ! 
But  even  as  he  thought  it,  he  roused  himself  with  a 
start  Eighteen  was  one  of  the  very  numbers  he  had 
j  ust  been  waiting  for.  No  time  for  otiose  reflections  now ; 


306  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

no  time  for  foolish  waste  of  sympathy;  the  moment  had 
arrived  for  vigorous  action.  With  a  sharp  decisive  air, 
he  plunged  down  a  hundred  louis  on  white.  Bystanders 
stared  and  whispered  and  nudged  one  another.  White 
won,  and  he  took  up  his  winnings  with  the  utmost  com- 
placency. How  quickly  one  accustoms  one's  self  to  these 
big  figures!  A  hundred  louis  seemed  nothing  now,  in 
pursuance  of  the  system.  Then  he  glanced  across  at 
George,  poor  luckless  George,  with  a  mute  inquiry.  How 
that  smooth-faced  young  Englishman  envied  him  his  suc- 
cess; for  George,  poor  George,  had  lost  again.  "Mad- 
ame," Hugh  said,  addressing  himself  with  an  apologetic 
smile  to  the  pretty  young  wife,  "allow  me  to  venture  ten 
louis  for  you." — The  blushing  girl  shrank  back  timidly. 
Hugh  laid  down  ten  pieces  of  gold  on  a  number  again, 
backing  his  own  luck  separately  by  the  regular  rule  on  a 
column  of  figures.  Chance  seemed  to  favor  him ;  he  was 
"in  the  vein,"  as  gamblers  say  in  their  hateful  dialect.  The 
number  won  for  poor  shrinking  little  Mrs.  Nellie,  and  the 
column  also  won  as  well  for  Hugh  himself.  He  pulled  in 
his  own  pile  of  gold  carelessly,  and  handed  the  other  to  the 
pretty  young  Englishwoman.  "It  isn't  ours,"  she  mur- 
mured with  a  shy  look.  "You  mustn't  ask  me;  I  really 
couldn't  take  it."' 

Hugh  laughed,  and  pressed  it  on  the  anxious  husband, 
who  cast  a  sidelong  glance  at  the  heap  of  gold,  and  finally 
in  some  vague  half-hearted  way  decided  upon  accepting 
it.  "Now  go,"  Hugh  said  with  a  fatherly  air.  "You 
don't  understand  this  sort  of  thing,  you  know.  You  be- 
long to  the  class  predestined  to  be  cheated.  The  sooner 
you  leave  this  place  the  better.  Let  nothing  induce  you 
ever  to  risk  another  penny  as  long  as  you  live  at  these 
preci«us  tables."  We  can  all  be  so  wise  and  prudent  for 
others. 

"But  it's  really  yours,"  the  young  Englishman  went  on, 
glancing  down  at  it  sheepishly.  "You  risked  your  own 
money,  you  see,  to  win  it." 

"Not  at  all,"  Hugh  answered  with  his  pleasantest  smile ; 
he  knew  how  to  do  a  gracious  act  graciously.  "I've  taken 
back  my  own  ten  louis  out  of  it  for  myself.  The  rest  is 
your  wife's.  I  staked  it  in  her  name.  It  was  her  good 


PACTOLUS  INDEED.  397 

luck  alone  that  won  for  both  of  us.  If  you  compel  me 
to  keep  it,  you  spoil  my  break.  A  burst  of  fortune  must 
end  somewhere.  Don't  stand  in  my  way,  please,  for  such 
a  mere  trifle." 

The  Englishman's  hand  closed,  half  reluctantly,  over 
the  ill-gotten  money,  and  Hugh,  undisturbed,  turned  back 
again  with  a  nod  to  his  own  gambling.  The  episode 
warmed  him  up  to  his  work.  A  pleasant  sense  of  a  gen- 
erous action  prettily  performed  inspired  and  invigorated 
his  play  from  that  moment.  He  went  on  with  his  game 
with  an  approving  conscience.  Some  people's  con- 
sciences approve  so  blandly.  The  other  players,  too,  ob- 
served and  applauded.  Gamblers  overflow  with  petty 
superstitions.  One  of  their  profoundest  is  the  rooted 
belief  that  meanness  and  generosity  brings  each  its  due 
reward:  whoever  gambles  in  a  lavish,  free-hearted,  open- 
handed  way  is  sure,  they  think,  to  become  the  favorite  of 
fortune. 

The  Russian,  on  the  other  hand,  kept  on  losing  steadily. 
Now  and  again,  indeed,  he  won  for  awhile  on  some  great 
coup,  raking  in  his  fifty  or  a  hundred  louis;  but  that  was 
by  exception:  for  the  most  part,  he  fritted  away  his  win- 
nings time  after  time,  and  had  recourse  with  alarming  fre- 
quency of  iteration  to  his  bundle  of  notes,  from  which  he 
changed  a  thousand  francs  every  half-hour  or  so  with  per- 
sistent ill-fortune.  Turn  upon  turn,  he  saw  his  money 
ruthlessly  swept  in  by  the  relentless  bank  with  unvarying 
regularity.  Now  it  was  zero  that  turned  up,  to  confound 
his  reckoning,  and  the  croupier,  with  his  bow,  made  a 
clean  sweep,  offhand,  of  the  entire  table:  now  it  was  a 
long  succession  of  left-hand  numbers  that  won  with  a 
rush,  while  he  had  staked  his  gold  with  unvarying  mishap 
upon  the  right-hand  column.  It  was  agonizing  each  time 
to  him  to  see  the  bank  carelessly  ladling  out  large  sums  to 
Hugh,  while  he  himself  went  on  losing  and  losing.  But  at 
all  hazards,  he  would  follow  his  calculations  to  the  bitter 
end.  Luck  must  have  a  turn  somewhere;  and  at  any 
rate,  plunging  would  never  improve  matters.  Hugh 
pitied  him  from  his  heart,  poor  ignorant  devil.  Why 
couldn't  he  find  out  with  an  exercise  of  reason  that  obvious 
flaw  in  his  own  system? 


398  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

A  thousand  francs  on  seven!  The  table  stares,  gapes, 
and  whispers.  Heavy  for  a  number!  Who  puts  it  on? 
This  Monsieur  on  the  seat  here — pointing  to  Hugh.  The 
croupier  shrugs  his  shoulder  and  spins.  Out  jumps  the 
pea.  Fourteen  wins. — Monsieur  was  very  nearly  right 
again,  voyez-vous? — Fourteen,  my  friend,  is  just  the  pre- 
cise double  of  seven.  Monsieur's  luck  is  something  truly 
miraculous. — He  goes  a  thousand  francs  once  more,  still 
on  seven.  Ceil!  but  he  has  the  courage  of  his  convictions, 
monami!  Twenty-three  wins. — Wrong  again!  He  drops 
on  that  a  second  thousand.  But  with  what  grace!  A 
thousand  francs  is  nothing  to  these  milords.  Hugh  smiles 
imperturbably  and  stakes  a  third.  On  seven  again!  The 
man  is  wonderful.  What  wins  this  time? — "Sept  gagne/' 
cries  everybody  in  hushed  admiration;  and  Hugh,  more 
sphinx-like  in  his  smile  than  ever,  but  conscious  of  a  dozen 
admiring  eyes  fixed  full  upon  him,  takes  coolly  up  his 
thirty-five  thousand.  Thirty-five  thousand  francs  is  not 
to  be  sneezed  at.  Fourteen  hundred  pounds  sterling!  The 
biggest  haul  yet,  but  nothing  when  you're  accustomed  to 
it.  What  a  run  of  luck!  Monsieur  was  in  the  vein,  in- 
deed. He  played  on  and  on,  more  elated  than  ever.  Af 
this  rate,  he  would  soon  earn  a  fortune  for  Elsie. 

Elsie,  Elsie,  Elsie,  Elsie!  Through  the  din  and  noise 
of  that  crowded  gambling-hell,  one  sacred  name  still  rang 
distinct  and  clear  in  his  ears.  It  wras  all  for  Elsie,  for 
Elsie,  for  Elsie!  He  must  make  himself  rich,  to  marry 
Elsie. 

He  played  on  still  with  careless  eagerness  till  the  tables 
closed — played  with  a  continuous  run  of  luck,  often  vary- 
ing, of  course — for  who  minds  a  few  hundreds  to  the  bad 
now  and  then  when  he's  winning  one  time  with  another 
his  thousands? — but  on  the  whole  a  run  of  luck  persist- 
ently favorable.  Raffalevsky,  meanwhile,  had  played  and 
lost.  At  the  end  of  the  day,  as  the  lackeys  came  in  to 
bow  the  world  out  with  polite  smiles,  they  both  rose  and 
left  the  rooms  together.  Then  a  sudden  thought  flashed 
across  his  soul.  Too  late  to  return  to  San  Remo  now! 
Awkward  as  it  was,  he  must  stop  the  night  out  at  Monte 
Carlo.  Full  of  himself — of  play  and  of  Elsie — he  had 
actually  forgotten  all  about  Winifred! 


PACTOLUS  INDEED.  399 

They  walked  across  side  by  side  to  the  Hotel  de  Paris. 
Hugh  was  far  too  feverishly  excited  now  with  his  day's 
play  to  care  in  the  least  about  the  slight  and  the  insult 
to  that  poor  dead  girl.  The  mere  indecency  of  it  was  all 
that  he  minded.  A  cynical  hardness  possessed  him  at 
last.  Nobody  need  know.  He  strolled  to  the  telegraph 
office  and  boldly  sent  off  a  message  to  the  pension: 

"Detained  at  Mentone  with  sympathizing  friends.  Re- 
turn to-morrow.  Make  all  arrangements  on  my  account. 
— Massinger." 

Then  he  presented  himself  at  the  bureau  of  the  Hotel 
de  Paris.  Monsieur  had  no  luggage;  but  no  matter  for 
that:  the  hotel  made  haste  to  accommodate  him  at  once 
with  the  best  of  rooms,  not  even  requiring  a  deposit  before- 
hand. All  Monte  Carlo  knew  well,  indeed,  that  Monsieur 
had  been  winning.  His  name  and  fame  had  been  noised 
abroad  by  many-headed  trumpeters.  His  pockets  were 
literally  stuffed  with  gold.  He  was  the  hero  of  the  day. 
He  had  carried  everything  at  the  Casino  before  him.  At- 
tentive servants  awaited  his  merest  beck  or  nod;  every- 
body was  pleased;  the  world  smiled  on  him.  Alphonse, 
Marie,  look  well  after  Monsieur!  Monsieur  has  had  the 
very  best  of  fortune. 

He  supped  with  Raffalevsky  in  a  beautifully  decorated 
salle-a-manger.  They  recounted  to  one  another,  glee- 
fully, gloomily,  their  winnings  and  losses.  The  totals 
were  heavy.  They  totted  them  up  with  varying  emotions. 
Hugh  had  won  three  thousand  four  hundred  pounds. 
Raffalevsky  had  made  a  hole  in  his  larger  capital  to  the 
tune  of  something  like  two  thousand  seven  hundred.  At 
the  announcement,  Hugh  smiled  his  most  benevolent  and 
philosophical  smile.  "After  all,"  he  said,  as  he  scanned 
the  wine-card,  toothpick  in  hand,  in  search  of  a  perfectly 
sound  Burgundy,  "if  one  man  wins,  another  must  lose. 
You  have  there  the  initial  weak  point  of  gambling.  It's 
at  bottom  a  truly  anti-social  amusement  But  these 
things  equalize  themselves  in  the  long  run ;  they  equalize 
themselves  by  the  doctrine  of  averages.  Taken  collective- 
ly, we're  better  off  than  we  were  at  lunch  at  any  rate. 
Then,  his  Serenity  of  Monaco  had  pocketed  a  couple  of 
hundred  louis  out  of  the  pair  of  us,  viewed  in  the  lump. 


400  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

This  evening,  on  the  contrary,  we're  seven  hundred  pounds 
to  the  good,  as  a  firm,  against  him. — I  like  to  best  these 
hereditary  plunderers.  It's  a  comfort  to  think  that,  in 
spite  of  everything,  we're  more  than  even  with  him  on  the 
day's  transactions!" 

Raffalevsky,  however,  strange  to  say,  appeared  to  de- 
rive but  scanty  consolation  from  this  very  vicarious  joint- 
stock  triumph;  he  didn't  see  things  in  the  proper  light. 
The  man  was  sullen,  positively  sullen.  Apparently,  a 
person  of  morose  disposition!  People  oughtn't  to  let  a 
little  reverse  of  fortune  produce  such  obviously  damping 
effects  upon  their  minds  and  spirits.  At  all  hazards,  they 
should  at  least  be  polite  in  general-  society.  "If  you'd 
lost  fifty  or  sixty  thousand  francs  yourself,  Monsieur," 
the  Russian  cried  petulantly,  "you  wouldn't  talk  in  quite 
so  airy  and  easy  a  way  about  our  joint  position." 

"Possibly  not,"  Hugh  answered,  with  perfect  good- 
humor,  showing  his  even  row  of  pearl-white  teeth  in  a 
pleasant  smile,  and  toying  with  the  pickle-fork.  Fortune 
had  favored  him.  He  would  bear  it  gracefully.  Xo 
meanness  for  him!  He  would  do  things  on  the  proper 
scale  now.  He'd  stand  Raffalevsky  a  splendid  supper. 
He  summoned  the  waiter  with  a  lordly  wave  of  his  languid 
hand  and  ordered  a  bottle  of  the  very  finest  white 
Hermitage. 


CHAPTER  XLVL 

THE  TURN  OF  THE  TIDE. 

At  Paris,  Warren  Relf  parted  with  Elsie.  He  saw  her 
safely  to  the  Northern  Railway  Station,  put  her  into  the 
first  night-train  for  Calais,  and  then  wriggled  back  him- 
self to  his  temporary  lair,  a  quiet  hotel  on  the  Cours-la- 
Reine,  just  behind  the  Palais  de  1'Industrie.  He  went 
back  to  bed,  but  not  to  sleep.  It  was  a  gusty  night,  that 
night  in  Paris.  The  wind  shook  and  rattled  the  loose 
panes  in  the  big  French  windows  that  opened  on  to  the 
balcony;  the  rain  beat  wildly  in  sudden  rushes  against 
the  rattling  glass;  the  chimney-pots  on  all  the  neighbor- 
ing roofs  moaned  and  howled  and  shivered  in  concert. 
Warren  Relf  reproached  himself  bitterly,  as  he  listened 


f  HE  TURN  OP  THE  TIDE,  tfl 

to  its  sound,  that  he  hadn't  decided  on  escorting  Elsie  the 
whole  of  her  way  across  to  England.  Mrs.  Grundy  would 
no  doubt  have  disapproved,  to  be  sure;  but  what  did  he 
care  in  his  heart,  after  all,  for  that  strange  apothesis  of 
censorious  matronhood?  It  would  have  been  better  to 
have*  seen  Elsie  safe  across  the  Channel,  Mrs.  Grundy  to 
the  contrary  notwithstanding,  and  installed  her  comfort- 
ably in  London  lodgings.  He  wished  he  had  done  it,  now 
he  heard  how  the  wind  was  roaring  and  tearing;  a  north- 
east wind,  yet  damp  and  rain-laden.  Warren  Relf  knew 
its  ways  and  its  manners  full  well.  It  must  be  blowing 
great-guns  across  the  North  Sea  now,  he  felt  only  too  sure, 
and  forcing  whole  squadrons  of  angry  waves  through  the 
narrow  funnel  of  the  Straits  of  Dover. 

As  the  night  wore  on,  however,  the  wind  rose  steadily, 
till  it  reached  at  last  the  full  dignity  of  a  regular  tempest. 
Warren  Relf  couldn't  sleep  in  his  bed  for  distress.  He 
rose  often,  and  looked  out  on  the  gusty  street  for  cold 
comfort.  The  gas  was  flaring  and  flickering  in  the  lamps ; 
the  wind  was  sweeping  fiercely  down  the  Cours-la-Reine ; 
and  the  few  belated  souls  who  still  kept  the  pavement 
were  cowering  and  running  before  the  beating  rain  with 
heads  bent  down  and  cloaks  or  overcoats  wrapped  tight 
around  them.  It  must  indeed  be  an  awful  night  on  the 
English  Channel;  Warren  stood  aghast  to  think  to  him- 
self how  awful.  What  on  earth  could  ever  have  possessed 
him,  he  wondered  now,  to  let  Elsie  make  her  way  alone, 
on  such  a  terrible  evening  as  this,  without  him  by  her 
side,  across  the  stormy  water! 

He  would  receive  a  telegram,  thank  Heaven,  first  thing 
in  the  morning.  Till  then,  his  suspense  would  be  really 
painful. 

As  for  Elsie,  she  sped  all  unconscious  on  her  way  to 
Calais,  comfortably  ensconced  in  her  first-class  compart- 
ment "pour  dames  seules,"  of  which  she  had  fortunately 
the  sole  monopoly.  The  rain  beat  hard  against  the  win- 
dows, to  be  sure;  and  the  wind  shook  the  door  with  its 
gusts  more  than  once,  or  made  the  feeble  oil-lamp  in  the 
roof  of  the  carriage  flicker  fitfully;  but  Elsie,  absorbed  in 
deeper  affairs,  hardly  thought  of  it  at  all  in  her  own  mind 
till  she  reached  the  stretch  of  open  coast  that  abuts  on  the 


402  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

mouth  of  the  Somme  near  Abbeville.  There  the  fact 
began  at  last  to  force  itself  upon  her  languid  attention  that 
the  Channel  crossing  would  be  distinctly  rough.  Still, 
even  then,  she  hardly  realized  its  full  meaning,  for  the 
wind  was  off-shore  along  the  Picardy  coast;  and  it  was 
not  till  the  train  drew  up  with  a  dash  on  the  quay  at 
Calais  that  she  fully  understood  the  serious  gravity  of  the 
situation.  The  waves  were  breaking  fiercely  over  the 
mouth  of  the  harbor,  and  the  sea  was  rising  so  high  outside 
that  passengers  were  met  with  stern  resolve  at  the  ter- 
minus wall  by  the  curt  notice : 

"Owing  to  the  rough  weather  prevailing  to-night,  the 
Dover  boat  will  not  sail  till  morning." 

"A  cause  du  mauvais  temps."  Cause  enough,  to  be  sure, 
wittt  such  a  sea  running!  Elsie  saw  at  a  glance  that  to 
cross  through  such  a  mountain  of  waves  would  have  been 
quite  impossible.  Did  the  Boulogne  boat  intend  to  start? 
she  asked  helplessly. — No,  madame ;  the  service  all  along 
the  coast  was  interrupted  to-night,  by  stress  of  weather. 
There  would  be  no  steamer  till  the  wind  moderated.  To- 
morrow morning,  perhaps,  or  to-morrow  evening. 

So  Elsie  went  perforce  to  an  hotel  in  the  town  and 
waited  patiently  for  the  sea  to  calm  itself.  But  she,  too, 
got  no  sleep;  she  lay  awrake  all  night,  and  thought  of 
Winifred. 

Away  at  Monte  Carlo,  no  wind  blew.  Hugh  Massinger 
went  to  rest  there  at  his  ease  at  the  Hotel  de  Paris,  and 
slept  his  sleep  out  with  perfect  complacency.  No  qualms 
of  conscience,  no  thoughts  of  Winifred,  disturbed  his 
slumber.  He  had  taken  the  precaution  to  doubly  lock 
and  bolt  his  door,  and  to  lay  his  winnings  between  the 
bolster  and  the  mattress;  so  he  had  nothing  to  trouble 
about.  He  had  also  been  careful  to  purchase  a  good  six- 
chambered  revolver  at  one  of  the  numerous  shops  that  line 
the  Casino  gardens.  It  isn't  safe,  indeed,  at  Monte  Carlo, 
they  say,  for  a  successful  player,  recognized  as  such,  to 
go  about  with  too  much  money  as  hard  cash  actually  in 
his  possession.  Raffalevsky,  in  fact,  had  told  him,  with 
most  unnecessary  details,  some  very  unpleasant  stories, 
before  he  retired  to  rest,  about  robberies  committed  at 
Monte  Carlo  upon  the  helpless  bodies  of  heavy  winners. 


THE  TURN  OF  THE  TIDE.  403 

Raffalevsky  was  clearly  in  a  savage  ill-temper  that  even- 
ing at  having  dropped  a  few  thousand  pounds  at  the  tables 
— strange,  that  men  should  permit  themselves  to  be  so 
deeply  affected  by  mere  transient  trifling  monetary  re- 
verses— and  he  took  it  out  by  repeating  or  inventing 
truculent  tales,  evidently  intended  to  poison  the  calm  rest 
of  Hugh  Massinger's  innocent  slumbers.  There  was  that 
ugly  anecdote,  for  example,  about  the  lucky  boulevardier 
in  the  high  financial  line  who  won  three  hundred  thousand 
francs  at  a  couple  of  sittings — and  was  murdered  in  a  first- 
class  carriage  on  his  way  back  to  Nice  by  an  unknown 
assailant,  never  again  recognized  or  brought  to  justice. 
There  was  that  alarming  incident  of  the  fat  Lyons  silk- 
merchant  with  the  cast  in  his  eye  who  deposited  his  gains, 
like  a  prudent  bourgeois  that  he  was,  with  a  banker  at 
Monaco,  but  was  nevertheless  set  upon  by  an  organized 
band  of  three  well-dressed  but  ill-informed  ruffians,  who 
positively  searched  him  from  head  to  foot,  stripped  him, 
and  then  threw  him  out  upon  the  four-foot  way,  a  helpless 
mass,  in  the  Mont  Boron  Tunnel,  happy  to  escape  with 
bare  life  and  a  broken  leg  from  the  merciless  clutches  of  the 
gang  of  miscreants.  And  there  was  that  dramatic  incident 
of  the  Nevada  heiress  who,  coming  to  Monte  Carlo  with 
the  gold  of  California  visibly  bulging  her  capacious 
pockets,  had  to  fight  for  her  life  in  her  own  bedroom  at  this 
very  hotel,  and  defend  her  property  from  unholy  hands  by 
the  summary  process  of  shooting  down  with  her  own 
domestic  revolver  two  of  her  cowardly  midnight  visitors. 
She  was  complimented  by  the  authorities  on  her  gallant 
defense,  and  replied  with  spirit  that,  for  the  matter  of  that, 
this  sort  of  thing  was  really  no  novelty  to  her;  for  she'd 
shot  down  more  than  one  importunate  suitor  for  her  hand 
and  heart  already  in  Nevada. 

Then  Raffalevsky  had  grown  more  lugubrious  in  his 
converse  still,  and  descended  to  tales  of  the  recurrent  sui- 
cides that  diversify  the  monotony  of  the  Monegasque 
world.  He  estimated  that  twelve  persons  at  least  per  an- 
num, on  a  moderate  average,  blew  their  brains  out  m  the 
Casino  and  grounds,  after  risking  and  losing  their  last 
napoleon  at  the  roulette  tables.  To  kill  yourself  in  the 
actual  salons  themselves,  he  admitted  with  a  sigh,  was 


404  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

indeed  considered  by  gentlemanly  players  as  a  boorish 
solecism :  persons  of  breeding,  intent  on  an  exit  from  this 
vale  of  tears,  usually  retired  for  the  purpose  of  shooting 
themselves  to  a  remote  and  sequestered  spot  in  the  Casino 
gardens,  behind  a  convenient  clump  of  picturesque  date- 
palms.  This  spot  was  known  to  habitual  frequenters  of 
Monte  Carlo  as  the  Place  Hari-kiri,  or  Happy  Despatch 
Point.  But  if,  by  hazard,  any  inconsiderate  person  was 
moved  to  shoot  himself  in  the  salles  de  jeu,  a  rapid  con- 
tingent of  trained  lackeys  stood  ever  at  hand  ready  to  rush 
in  at  a  moment's  notice  to  drag  away  the  offender's  body  or 
wipe  up  the  mess;  and  play  proceeded  at  once  the  same 
as  usual. 

Raffalevsky  dilated  upon  all  the  particulars  of  the  va- 
rious murders,  suicides,  and  robberies,  with  a  wealth  of 
diction  and  a  fertile  exuberance  of  sanguinary  detail  that 
would  certainly  have  done  honor  in  its  proper  place  to  M. 
Zola  or  a  penny  dreadful.  It  shocked  Hugh's  fine  sense 
of  the  becoming  in  language — his  keen  feeling  for  reserve 
in  literature — to  listen  to  so  many  revolting  and  sickening 
items.  But  the  Russian  was  clearly  in  a  humor  that  even- 
ing for  blood  and  wounds.  He  spared  no  strong  point  in 
his  catalogue  of  horrors.  He  revelled  in  gore.  He  in- 
sisted on  the  minutest  accuracy  of  anatomical  description. 
He  robbed  and  murdered  like  one  who  loved  it.  He  even 
strained  the  resources  of  the  French  language,  sufficiently 
rich,  for  the  rest,  in  terms  of  awe,  as  he  rang  the  changes 
and  piled  up  the  agonies  in  his  vivid  recital  of  crimes  and 
catastrophies. 

Nevertheless,  Hugh  slept  soundly  in  spite  of  it  all  in  his 
bed  till  morning,  and  when  he  woke,  found  his  goodly 
pile  of  gold  and  notes  intact  as  ever  between  bolster  and 
mattress.  He  had  never  slept  so  well  since  he  went  to 
Whitestrand. 

But  at  Whitestrand  itself  that  night  things  were  quite 
otherwise.  Such  a  storm  was  hardly  remembered  on  the 
German  Ocean  within  the  memory  of  the  oldest  sailors. 
Early  in  the  evening,  the  coastguardman  at  the  shelter 
just  beyond  the  Hall  grounds,  warned  by  telegram  from 
the  Meteorological  Office,  had  raised  the  cone  for  heavy 


THE  TURN  OF  THE  TIDE.  405 

weather  from  the  northeast.  By  nine  o'clock,  the  surf  was 
seething  and  boiling  on  the  bar,  and  the  waves  were  dash- 
ing themselves  in  huge  sheets  of  foam  against  Hugh  Mas- 
singer's  ineffectual  breakwater.  The  sand  flew  before  the 
angry  gusts:  it  blinded  the  eyes  and  filled  the  lungs  of  all 
who  tried  to  face  the  storm  on  the  sea-front:  even  up  the 
river  and  at  the  Hall  itself  it  pervaded  the  air  with  a  perfect 
bombardment  of  tiny  grains.  It  was  only  possible  to  re- 
main outdoors  by  turning  one's  back  upon  the  fierce  blast, 
or  by  covering  one's  face,  not  with  a  veil,  but  with  a  silk 
pocket-handkerchief.  The  very  coastguardmen,  accus- 
tomed by  long  use  to  good  doses  of  solid  silica  in  the 
lungs,  shrank  back  with  alarm  from  the  idea  of  facing 
that  running  fire  of  driven  sand-particles.  As  for  the 
smacks  and  boats  at  large  on  the  sea,  they  were  left  to  their 
fate — nothing  could  be  done  by  human  hands  to  help  or 
save  them. 

By  midnight,  tide  was  well  at  its  full,  and  the  beach 
being  covered,  the  bombardment  of  sand  slowly  inter- 
mitted a  little.  But  sheets  of  foam  and  spray  still  drove 
on  before  the  wind,  and  fishermen,  clad  in  waterproof  suits 
from  head  to  foot,  stood  facing  them  upon  the  shore  to 
watch  the  fate  of  Hugh  Massinger's  poor  helpless  break- 
water. The  sea  was  roaring  and  raving  round  its  sides 
now  like  a  horde  of  savages,  and  the  scour  was  setting 
in  fiercer  than  ever  to  wash  away  whatever  remained  of 
Whitestrand. 

"Will  it  stand,  Bill?"  the  farm-bailiff  asked  in  anxious 
tones  of  Stannaway,  the  innkeeper,  as  they  strained  their 
eyes  through  the  gloom  and  spray  to  catch  sight  of  the 
frail  barrier  that  alone  protected  them — the  stone  break- 
water which  had  taken  the  place  of  the  old  historical 
Whitestrand  poplar. 

Stannaway  shook  his  head  despondently.  "Sea  like 
that's  bound  to  wash  it  away,"  he  answered  hard  through 
the  teeth  of  the  wind.  "It'd  wash  away^  anything.  An' 
when  it  goes,  it's  all  up  with  Whitestrand." 

The  whole  village,  indeed,  men,  women,  and  children 
alike,  had  collected  by  this  time  at  the  point  by  the  river, 
to  watch  the  progress  of  the  common  enemy.  There  was 
a  fearful  interest  for  every  one  of  them  in  seeing  the  waves 


406  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

assail  and  beat  down  that  final  barrier  of  their  hearths  and 
homes.  If  the  breakwater  went,  Whitestrand  must  surely 
follow^  it,  now  or  later,  bit  by  bit,  in  piecemeal  destruction. 
The  sea  would  swallow  it  up  wholesale,  as  it  swallowed 
up  Dunwich  and  Thorpe  and  Slaughden.  Those  domestic 
examples  gave  point  to  their  terror.  To  the  Suffolk 
coast-dwellers,  the  sea  indeed  envisages  itself  ever,  not  as 
a  mere  natural  expanse  of  water,  but  as  a  slow  and  patient 
yet  implacable  assailant. 

By  two  in  the  morning,  a  fresh  excitement  supervened 
to  keep  up  the  interest:  a  collier  hull,  deserted  and  water- 
logged, came  drifting  in  by  slow  stages  before  the  driving 
gale  across  the  broad  sand-flats.  She  was  a  dismasted 
hulk,  rackety  and  unseaworthy,  abandoned  by  all  who 
had  tried  to  sail  her;  and  she  drifted  slowly,  slowly,  slowly 
on,  driven  before  the  waves,  foot  by  foot,  a  bit  at  a  time, 
over  the  wet  sands,  till  at  last,  with  one  supreme  effort  of 
force,  the  breakers  cast  her  up,  a  huge  burden,  between 
the  shore  and  the  breakwater,  blocking  with  her  broad- 
side one  entire  end  of  the  channel  created  by  the  scour 
behind  the  spot  once  occupied  by  the  famous  poplar.  The 
waves,  in  fact,  das'hed  her  full  against  the  farther  end  of 
the  breakwater,  and  jammed  her  up  with  prodigious  force 
between  shore  and  wall,  a  temporary  barrier  against  their 
own  advances.  Then  retiring  for  a  moment  to  recruit 
their  rage,  they  broke  in  sheets  of  helpless  foam  against 
the  \v6oden  bulwark  they  had  raised  themselves  in  the 
direct  line  of  their  own  progress. 

What  followed  next  followed  so  fast  that  even  the  sturdy 
Whitestranders  themselves,  accustomed  as  they  were  to 
heavy  seas  and  shifting  sands  and  natural  changes  of  mar- 
velous rapidity,  stood  aghast  at  its  suddenness  and  its 
awful  energy.  In  a  few  minutes,  before  their  very  eyes, 
the  sea  had  carried  huge  masses  and  shoals  of  flying  sand 
over  the  top  of  the  wall  and  the  stranded  ship,  and  lodged 
them  deep  in  the  hollow  below  that  the  scour  had  created 
in  the  rear  of  the  breakwater.  The  wall  was  joined  as  if 
by  some  sudden  stroke  of  a  conjurer's  wand  to  the  main- 
land beyond ;  and  the  sea,  still  dashing  madly  against  the 
masonry  and  the  ship,  set  to  work  once  more  to  erect 
fresh  outworks  in  front  against  its  own  assaults  by  piling 


THE  TURN  OF  THE  TIDE.  407 

up  sand  with  incredible  speed  in  dunes  and  mounds  upon 
their  outer  faces.  Even  as  they  looked,  the  breakwater 
was  rapidly  lost  to  view  in  a  mountain  of  beach :  the  brok- 
en stump  of  mast  on  the  wrecked  collier  hardly  showed 
above  the  level  of  the  mushroom  hillock  that  covered 
and  overwhelmed  with  its  hasty  debris  the  buried  hull 
of  the  unknown  vessel.  Hummock  after  hummock  grew 
apace  outside  with  startling  rapidity  in  successive  lines 
along  the  shore  to  seaward.  New  land  was  forming  at 
each  crash  of  the  waves.  The  Aeolian  sand  was  doing 
its  work  bravely.  By  five  in  the  morning,  men  walked 
secure  where  the  sea  had  roared  but  six  hours  before.  It 
had  left  the  buried  breakwater  now  a  quarter  of  a  mile  in- 
land at  least,  and  was  till  engaged  with  mad  eagerness  in 
its  rapid  task  of  piling  up  fresh  mounds  and  heaps  in 
endless  rows,  to  seaward  and  to  seaward  and  ever  to 
seaward. 

Whitestrand  was  saved.  Nay,  more  than  that,  it  was 
gaining  once  more  in  a  single  night  all  that  it  had  lost  in 
twenty  years  to  the  devouring  ocean. 

When  morning  broke,  the  astonished  Whitestranders 
could  hardly  recognize  their  own  beach,  their  own  shore, 
their  own  salt  marshes,  their  own  river.  Everything  was 
changed  as  if  by  magic.  The  estuary  was  gone,  and  in 
its  place  stretched  a  wide  expanse  of  undulating  sandhills. 
The  Char  had  turned  its  course  visibly  southward,  burst- 
ing the  dikes  on  the  Yond-stream  farms,  and  flowing  to 
the  sea  by  the  old  channel  from  which  Oliver's  engineers 
had  long  since  diverted  it.  The  Hall  stood  half  a  mile 
farther  from  the  water's  edge  than  it  had  done  of  old,  and 
a  belt  of  bare  and  open  dune-land  lay  tossed  between  its 
grounds  and  the  new  high-tide  mark.  The  farm-bailiff 
examined  them  in  the  gray  dawn  with  a  practiced  eye. 
''If  we  plant  them  hills  all  over  with  maramgrass  and 
tamarisk,"  he  said  reflectively,  "they'll  mat  like  the  other 
ones,  and  Squire  will  have  as  many  acres  of  new  pasture- 
land  north  o'  Char  as  ever  he  lost  o'  salt  marsh  and  mead- 
ow south  of  the  old  river." 

If  Hugh  Massinger  had  only  known  it,  indeed,  the  storm 
and  the  strange  chances  of  tempest  had  done  far  more 
for  him  that  single  night  while  he  slept  at  Monte  Carlo 


408  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

• 

than  luck  at  roulette  had  managed  to  do  for  him  the  day 
before  in  that  hot  and  crowded  sink  of  iniquity  in  the 
rooms  of  the  Casino. 

For  from  that  day  forth  Whitestrand  was  safe.  It  was 
more  than  safe;  it  began  to  grow  again.  The  blown  sand 
ceased  to  molest  it:  the  sea  and  the  tide  ceased  to  eat  it 
away:  the  breakwater  had  done  its  work  well,  after  all; 
and  a  new  barrier  of  increasing  sandhills  had  sprung  up 
spontaneously  by  the  river's  mouth  to  guard  its  seaward 
half  from1  future  encroachment.  If  Hugh  could  only  have 
known  and  believed  it,  the  estate  was  worth  every  bit  as 
much  that  wild  morning  as  ever  it  had  been  in  the  palmiest 
days  of  the  Elizabethan  Meyseys.  And  the  family  solicit- 
or, examining  the  mortgages  in  his  own  office,  remarked 
to  himself  with  a  pensive  glance  that  the  Squire  might 
have  raised  that  little  sum,  if  only  he'd  waited,  at  scarcely 
more  than  half  the  interest,  on  his  own  security  and  his 
improved  property.  For  Whitestrand  now  would  fetch 
money. 


CHAPTER  XLVII. 

FORTUNE  OF  WAR. 

At  Monte  Carlo,  on  the  other  hand,  day  dawned  serene 
and  calm  and  cloudless.  Hugh  Massinger  rose,  unmind- 
ful of  his  far-away  Suffolk  sandhills,  and  gazed  with  a 
pleasant  dreamy  feeling  out  of  the  window  of  his  luxu- 
rious first-floor  bedroom.  It  was  a  strange  outlook.  On 
one  side,  the  ornate  and  overloaded  Parisian  architecture 
of  that  palace  of  Circe,  plumped  down  so  grotesquely, 
with  its  meretricious  town-bred  airs  and  graces,  among  the 
rugged  scenery  of  the  Maritime  Alps:  on  the  other  side, 
the  inaccessible  crags  and  pinnacles  of  the  Tete-de-Chien, 
gray  and  lonely  as  any  mountain  side  in  Scotland  or 
Savoy — the  actual  terminus  of  the  main  range  of  snow- 
clad  Alps,  whose  bald  peaks  topple  over  sheer  three  thou- 
sand feet  into  the  blue  expanse  of  the  Mediterranean,  that 
washes  the  base  of  their  precipitous  bluffs.  The  contrast 


FORTUNE  OF  WAR.  40$ 

was  almost  ludicrous  in  its  quaint  extremes.  If  wit  be 
rightly  defined  as  the  juxtaposition  of  the  incongruous, 
then  is  Monte  Carlo  indeed  a  grand  embodiment  of  the 
practically  witty.  The  spot  would  be  a  Paradise  if  it  were 
not  a  Hell.  The  Casino  stands  on  its  ledge  of  terrace 
like  a  fragment  of  Paris  in  its  worst  phase,  dropped  down 
from  the  clouds  by  some  Merlin's  art  amid  the  wildest 
and  most  exquisite  rocky  scenery  on  the  whole  glorious 
stretch  of  enchanted  coast  that  spreads  its  long  and  fan- 
tastic panorama  in  unbroken  succession  of  hill  and  moun- 
tain from  the  quays  of  Marseilles  to  the  palaces  of  Genoa. 
He  did  not  wholly  approve  the  desecration.  Hugh 
Massinger's  tastes  were  not  all  distorted.  Dissipation  to 
him  was  but  a  small  part  and  fraction  of  existence.  He 
took  it  only  as  the  mustard  of  life — an  agreeable  condi- 
ment to  be  sparingly  partaken  of. — The  poet's  instinct 
within  him  had  kept  alive  and  fresh  his  healthy  interest  in 
simpler  things,  in  hill  and  dale,  in  calm  and  peaceful  coun- 
try pleasures.  After  that  feverish  day  of  gambling  at 
Monte  Carlo,  he  would  dearly  have  loved  to  rise  early  and 
saunter  out  alone  for  a  morning  walk;  to  scale  before 
breakfast  the  ramping  cliffs  of  the  Tete-de-Chien,  and  to 
reach  the  mouldering  Roman  tower  of  Turbia,  that  long 
mounted  guard  on  the  narrow  path  where  Gaul  and  Italy 
marched  together.  But  that  hateful  pile-  of  gold  and 
notes  between  the  pillow  and  the  mattress  restrained  his 
desire.  It  would  be  dangerous  to  wander  among  the 
lonely  mountains  with  so  large  a  sum  as  that  concealed 
about  his  person ;  dangerous  to  leave  it  unguarded  at  the 
hotel,  or  to  entrust  it  to  the  keeping  of  any  casual  stranger. 
"Cantabit  vacuus  coram  latrone  viator,"  he  murmured  to 
himself  half  aloud  with  a  sigh  of  regret,  as  he  turned  away 
his  eyes  from  that  glorious  semicircle  of  jagged  peaks  that 
bounded  his  horizon.  He  must  stop  at  home  and  take 
care  of  his  money-bags,  like  any  vulgar  cheese-mongering 
millionaire  of  them  all.  Down,  poet's  heart,  with  your  un- 
reasonable aspirations  for  the  lonely  mountain  heights! 
Amaryllis  and  asphodel  are  not  for  you.  Shoulder  your 
muck-rake  with  a  manful  smile,  and  betake  you  to  the 
Casino  where  Circe  calls,  as  soon  as  the  great  gate  swings 
once  more  on  its  grating  hinges.  You  cannot  serve  two 


410  THIS  MORTAL  C  OIL. 

masters.  You  have  chosen  Mammon  to-day,  and  him 
you  must  worship.  No  mountain  air  for  your  lungs  this 
morning;  but  the  close  and  crowded  atmosphere  of  the 
roulette  tables.  Keep  true  to  your  creed  for  a  little  while 
longer:  it  is  all  for  Elsie's  sake! — For  Elsie!  For  Elsie! 
— He  withdrew  his  head  from  the  window  with  a  faint 
flush  of  shame.  Ah,  heaven,  to  think  he  should  think  of 
Elsie  in  such  a  connection  and  at  such  a  moment! 

He  had  the  grace  himself  to  be  heartily  disgusted  at  it. 
Gambling  was  indeed  a  hateful  trade.  When  once  he  had 
won  a  fortune  for  Elsie,  he  would  never  again  touch  carcl 
or  dice,  never  let  her  learn  whence  that  fortune  had  been 
gathered.  He  would  even  try  to  keep  her  out  of  his  mind, 
for  her  purity's  sake,  while  he  remained  at  Monte  Carlo. 
He  loved  her  too  well  to  drag  her  into  that  horrid  Casino, 
were  it  but  in  memory.  A  man  is  himself,  one  and  indi- 
visible; but  still  he  must  hold  the  various  parts  of  his 
complex  nature  at  arm's  length  sometimes;  he  must 
prevent  them  from  clashing :  he  must  refrain  from  mixing 
up  what  is  purest  and  truest  and  profoundest  in  his  heart 
with  all  that  is  vilest  and  lowest  and  ugliest  and  most  mon- 
ey-grubbing. Hugh  had  an  unsullied  shrine  left  vacant 
for  Elsie  still:  he  would  not  profane  that  inmost  niche 
of  his  better  soul  with  the  poisonous  air  of  the  gambling 
hells  of  Monaco.  Let  him  sink  where  he  would,  he  was 
yet  a  poet. 

He  dressed  himself  slowly  and  went  down  to  breakfast. 
Attentive  waiters,  expectant  of  a  duly  commensurate  tip, 
sniffing  pour-boire  from  afar,  crowded  round  for  the  honor 
of  his  distinguished  orders.  Raffalevsky  joined  him  in  the 
salle-a-manger  shortly.  The  Russian  was  haggard  and 
pale  from  sleeplessness:  dark  rings  surrounded  his  glassy 
black  eyes :  his  face  was  the  face  of  a  boiled  codfish.  No 
waiter  hurried  to  receive  his  commands :  all  Monte  Carlo 
knew  him  well  already  for  a  heavy  loser.  Your  loser  sel- 
dom overflows  into  generous  tipping.  Hugh  beckoned 
him  over  to  his  own  table :  he  would  extend  to  the  Rus- 
sian the  easy  favor  of  his  profuse  hospitality.  Raffalevsky 
seated  himself  in  a  sulky  humor  by  the  winner's  side.  He 
meant  to  play  it  out  still,  he  said,  to  the  bitter  end.  He 
couldn't  afford  to  lose  and  leave  off;  that  game  was  for  a 


FORTUNE  OF  WAR.  411 

capitalist.  For  himself,  he  speculated — well — on  bor- 
rowed funds.  He  must  win  all  back  or  lose  all  utterly. 
In  the  latter  case — a  significant  gesture  completed  the  sen- 
tence. He  put  up  his  hand  playfully  to  his  right  ear  and 
clicked  with  his  tongue,  like  the  click  of  a  revolver  barrel. 
Hugh  smiled  responsive  to  his  most  meaning  smile. 
"Esperons  toujours,"  he  murmured  philosophically  in  his 
musical  voice  and  perfect  accent.  No  man  on  earth  could 
ever  bear  with  more  philosophical  composure  than  Hugh 
Massinger  the  misfortunes  of  others. 

Before  he  left  the  breakfast-table  that  morning,  a  waiter 
presented  the  bill,  all  deferential  politeness.  "I  sleep,  here 
to-night  again,"  Hugh  observed  with  a  yawn,  as  he  noted 
attentively  the  lordly  conception  of  its  various  items.  The 
waiter  bowed  a  profound  bow. — "At  Monte  Carlo,  Mon- 
sieur," he  said  significantly,  "one  pays  daily." — Hugh  drew 
out  a  handful  of  gold  from  his  pocket  with  a  laugh  and 
paid  at  once.  But  the  omen  disquieted  him.  Who  wins 
to-day  may  lose  to-morrow.  Clearly,  the  hotel,  at  least, 
had  thoroughly  learned  that  simple  lesson. 

They  filed  in  among  the  first  at  the  doors  of  the  Casino. 
Once  started,  Hugh  played,  with  scarcely  an  intermission 
for  food,  till  the  tables  closed  again.  He  kept  himself  up 
with  champagne  and  sandwiches.  That  was  indeed  a 
glorious  day!  A  wild  success  attended  his  hazards.  He 
staked  and  won ;  staked  and  lost ;  staked  and  won ;  staked 
and  lost  again.  But  the  winnings  by  far  outbalanced  the 
losses.  It  went  the  round  of  the  tables  in  frequent  whis- 
pers that  a  young  Englishman,  a  poet  by  feature,  was 
breaking  the  bank  with  his  audacious  plunging.  He 
plunged  again,  and  again  successfully.  People  crowded 
up  from  their  own  game  at  neighboring  boards  to  watch 
and  imitate  the  too  lucky  Englishman.  "Give  him  his 
head!  He's  in  the  vein!"  they  said.  "A  man  in  the  vein 
should  always  keep  playing."  The  young  lady  with  the 
fine  Pennsylvanian  twang  remarked  with  occidental  plain 
ness  of  speech  that  she  "wouldn't  object  to  running  a  part- 
nership." Hugh  laughed  and  demurred.— "You  might 
dilute  the  luck,  you  know,"  he  answered  good-humoredly. 
"But  if  you'll  hand  me  over  a  hundred  louis,  I  don  t  mind 
putting  them  on  31  for  you."  He  did,  and  they  won. 


412  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

The  crowd  of  gamblers  applauded,  all  hushed,  with  their 
usual  superstitious  awe  and  veneration.  "He  has  the  run 
of  the  numbers,"  they  said  in  concert.  To  gamblers  gen- 
erally, fate  is  a  goddess,  a  living  reality,  with  capricious 
likes  and  dislikes  of  her  own.  They  are  ever  ready  to 
back  her  favorite  for  the  time  being;  they  look  upon  play 
as  a  predestined  certainty. 

Raffalevsky  meanwhile  lost  and  lost  with  equal  per- 
sistence. He  drank  as  much  champagne  as  Hugh;  but 
the  wine  inspired  no  lucky  guesses.  When  they  came  to 
count  up  their  gains  and  losses  at  the  end  of  the  day,  they 
found  it  was  still  a  neck-and-neck  race,  in  opposite  ways, 
between  them.  Hugh  had  won  altogether  close  on  nine 
thousand  pounds.  Raffalevsky  had  lost  rather  more  than 
eight  thousand  five  hundred. 

"Xever  mind,"  Hugh  remarked  with  his  inexhaustible 
buoyancy.  "We're  still  to  the  good  against  his  Mone- 
gasque  Highness.  There's  a  balance  of  something  like 
five  hundred  pounds  in  our  joint  favor." 

"In  other  words,"  Raffalevsky  answered  with  a  grim 
smile,  "you've  won  all  my  money  and  some  other  fellow's 
too.  You're  the  sponge  that  sucks  up  all  my  lifeblood. 
I've  got  barely  three  thousand  five  hundred  left.  When 
that  goes — "  And  he  repeated  once  more  the  same  ex- 
pressive suicidal  pantomime. 

That  night  Hugh  slept  at  Monte  Carlo  once  more.  He 
had  lost  all  sense  of  shame  and  decency  now.  He  sent  off 
a  note  for  tvvo  thousand  francs  to  the  people  at  the  pension, 
just  as  a  guarantee  of  good  faith — as  the  newspapers  say — 
and  to  let  them  know  he  was  really  returning.  But  he 
had  formed  a  shadowy  plan  of  his  own  by  this  time.  He 
would  wait  another  day  at  the  Casino  and  go  home  to  San 
Remo  with  Warren  Relf  by  the  train  that  reached  there  at 
6:39 — the  train  by  which  Elsie  had  said  in  her  note  he 
would  be  returning. 

Why  he  wished  to  do  so,  he  hardly,  with  distinctness, 
knew  himself.  Certainly  he  did  not  mean  to  pick  a  quar- 
rel; he  only  knew  in  a  vague  sort  of  way  he  was  going 
by  that  train;  and  until  it  started  he  would  keep  on 
playing. 

And  lose  every  penny  he'd  won,  perhaps!     Why  not 


FORTUNE  OP  WAR.  413 

leave  off  at  once,  secure  of  his  eight  thousand?  Bah! 
what  was  eight  thousand  now  to  him?  He'd  win  a  round 
twenty  before  he  left  off — for  Elsie. 

So  he  played  next  day  from  morning  till  night ;  played 
and  drank  champagne  feverishly.  Such  luck  had  never 
been  known  at  the  tables.  Old  players  stood  by  with  ob- 
servant faces  and  admired  his  vein.  Was  ever  a  system 
seen  like  his?  Such  judgment,  they  said;  such  restraint; 
such  coolness! 

But  inwardly,  Hugh  was  consumed  all  day  by  a  devour- 
ing fire.  His  excitement  at  last  knew  no  bounds.  He 
drank  champagne  by  the  glassful  to  keep  his  nerve  up. 
He  had  won  before  nightfall,  all  told,  no  less  a  sum  than 
eleven  thousand  pounds  sterling.  What  was  the  miserable 
remnant  of  Whitestrand,  now,  to  him!  Let  Whitestrand 
sink  in  the  sea  for  all  he  cared  for  it!  He  had  here  a 
veritable  mine  of  wealth.  He  would  go  back  to  San  Remo 
to  bury  Winifred — and  return  to  heap  up  a  gigantic 
fortune. 

Eleven  thousand  pounds!  A  mere  bagatelle.  At  five 
per  cent,  five  hundred  and  fifty  a  year  only! 

His  train  was  due  to  start  at  five.  About  four  o'clock, 
Raffalevsky  came  up  to  him  from  another  table.  The 
Russian's  face  was  white  as  death.  "I've  lost  all,"  he 
murmured  hoarsely,  drawing  Hugh  aside.  "The  whole, 
ihe  whole,  my  three  hundred  thousand  francs  of  borrowed 
capital! — And  what's  worse  still,  I  borrowed  it  from  the 
chest — government  money — the  treasury  of  the  squadron ! 
If  I  go  back  alive,  I  shall  be  court-martialed. — For  Heav- 
en's sake,  my  friend,  lend  me  at  least  a  few  hundred  francs 
to  retrieve  my  luck  with !" 

Hugh  put  his  hand  to  his  pile  and  drew  out  three  notes 
of  a  thousand  francs  each— a  hundred  and  twenty  pounds 
sterling  in  all.  It  was  nothing,  nothing.  "Good  luck  go 
with  them,"  he  cried  good-humoredly.  "When  those  are 
gone,  my  dear  fellow,  come  back  for  more.  I'm  not  the 
man,  I  hope  and  trust,  to  turn  my  back  upon  a  comrade 
in  misfortune." 

The  Russian  snapped  at  them  with  a  grateful  gesture, 
but  without  hesitation  or  spoken  thanks,  and  returned  in 


414  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

hot  haste  to  his  own  table.  Gamblers  have  little  time  for 
needless  talking. 

At  a  quarter  to  five,  after  a  last  hasty  draught  of  cham- 
pagne at  the  buffet,  Hugh  turned  to  go  out,  with  his  cash 
in  his  pocket.  In  front  of  him  he  saw  just  an  apparition  of 
Raffalevsky,  rushing  wildly  away  with  one  hand  upon 
his  forehead.  The  man's  face  was  awful  to  behold.  Hugh 
felt  sure  the  Russian  had  lost  all  once  more,  and  been  too 
much  ashamed  even  to  renew  his  application. 

The  great  door  swung  slowly  upon  its  hinges,  and 
Raffalevsky  burst  into  the  outer  corridor,  bowed  from 
the  room  with  great  dignity,  in  spite  of  his  frantic  haste, 
by  a  well-liveried  attendant  There  is  plenty  of  obse- 
quiousness at  Monte  Carlo  for  every  player,  even  if  he 
has  lost  his  last  louis. 

They  emerged  once  more  upon  the  beautiful  terrace, 
the  glorious  view,  the  penciled  palm-trees.  All  around, 
the  sinking  Italian  sun  lit  up  that  fairy  coast  with  pink 
and  purple.  Bay  and  rock  and  mountain-side  showed  all 
the  more  exquisite  after  the  fetid  air  of  those  crowded 
gaming  saloons.  High  up  on  the  shoulders  of  the  inac- 
cessible Alps  the  great  square  Roman  keep  of  Turbia 
gazed  down  majestically  with  mute  contempt  on  the  fev- 
erish throng  of  miserable  idlers  who  poured  in  and  out 
through  the  gaudy  portals  of  the  garish  Casino.  A  se- 
rene delight  pervaded  Hugh  Massinger's  placid  soul;  he 
felt  himself  vastly  superior  to  these  human  butterflies ;  he 
knew  his  own  worth  as  he  turned  entranced  from  the  mar- 
ble steps  to  the  beautiful  prospect  that  spread  everywhere 
unrolled  like  a  picture  around  him.  Poet  as  he  was,  he 
despised  mere  gamblers;  and  he  carried  eleven  thousand 
pounds  odd  of  winnings  in  notes  in  his  pocket. 

RVr!  A  sharp  report!  A  cry!  A  concourse!  Some- 
thing uncanny  had  surely  happened.  People  were  run- 
ning up  where  the  pistol  went  off.  Hugh  Massinger 
turned  with  a  shudder  of  disgust.  How  discomposing! 
The  usual  ugly  Monte  Carlo  incident!  Raffalevsky  had 
shot  himself  behind  the  shade  of  the  palm-trees. 

The  man  was  lying,  a  hideous  mass,  in  a  crimson  pool 
of  his  own  blood,  prone  on  the  ground — hit  through  the 
temple  with  a  well-directed  bullet.  It  was  a  horrid  sight, 


AT  BAT.  416. 

and  Hugh's  nerves  were  sensitive.  If  it  hadn't  been  for 
the  champagne,  he  would  really  have  fainted.  Besides, 
the  train  was  nearly  due.  If  you  hover  about  where  men 
have  killed  themselves,  you're  liable  to  be  let  in,  for  what- 
ever may  happen,  to  the  Monegasque  equivalent  for  that 
time-honored  institution,  our  own  beloved  British  coro- 
ner's inquest.  He  might  be  hailed  as  a  witness.  Is  that 
law?  Ay,  marry,  is  it?  Crowner's  quest  law!  Better 
give  it  all  a  wide  berth  at  once.  The  bell  was  ringing  for 
the  train  below.  With  a  sudden  shudder,  Hugh  hurried 
away  from  the  ghastly  object.  After  all,  he  had  done  his 
best  to  save  him — lent  him  or  given  him  three  thousand 
francs  to  retrieve  his  losses.  It  was  none  of  his  fault 
If  one  man  wins,  another  man  loses!  Luck,  luck,  the 
mere  incalculable  chances  of  the  table!  If  their  places 
had  been  reversed,  would  that  morose,  unsociable,  ill- 
tempered  Russian  have  volunteered  to  give  him  three 
thousand  francs  to  throw  away,  he  wondered?  Never, 
never:  'twas  all  for  the  best.  The  Russian  had  lost,  and 
he  had  won — eleven  thousand  pounds  odd,  for  Elsie. 

He  rushed  away  and  dashed  headlong  into  the  station. 
His  own  revolver  was  safe  in  his  pocket.  He  carried 
eleven  thousand  pounds  odd  about  him.  No  man  should 
rob  him  without  a  fight  between  here  and  San  Remo. 


CHAPTER  XLVIH. 

AT  BAY. 

Honest  folk  give  lucky  winners  a  wide  berth  at  the  Casino 
railway  station,  lest  they  should  be  suspected  of  possible 
evil  designs  upon  their  newly  got  money.  Hugh  found, 
therefore,  he  could  pick  his  own  seat  quite  at  will,  for 
nobody  seemed  anxious  to  claim  the  dubious  honor  of 
riding  alone  with  him.  So  he  strolled  along  the  tram 
humming  a  gay  tune,  and  inspecting  the  carriages  with 
an  attentive  eye,  till  he  reached  a  certain  first-class  com- 
partment not  far  from  the  front,  where  a  single  passenger 


416  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

was  quietly  seated.  The  single  passenger  made  his  heart 
throb ;  for  it  was  Warren  Relf — alone  and  unprotected. 

He  hardly  knew  why,  but,  flushed  with  wine  and  con- 
tinued good  fortune,  he  meant  to  ride  back  in  that  very 
carriage,  face  to  face  with  the  baffled  and  defeated  ser- 
pent; for  Hugh  had  already  discounted  his  prospective 
victory.  Warren  was  looking  the  opposite  way,  and  did 
not  perceive  him.  Hugh  waited,  therefore,  till  the  train 
was  just  about  to  start  from  the  station,  and  then  he 
jumped  in — too  late  for  Warren,  if  he  would,  to  change 
his  carriage. 

In  a  second,  the  painter  turned  round  and  recognized 
his  companion.  He  gave  a  sudden  start.  At  last  the  two 
men  had  met  in  earnest.  A  baleful  light  beamed  in  Hugh's 
dark  eye.  His  blood  was  up.  He  had  run  too  fast 
through  the  whole  diapason  of  passion.  Roulette  and 
champagne,  love  and  jealousy,  hatred  and  vindictiveness, 
had  joined  together  to  fire  and  inflame  his  heart.  He  was 
at  white-heat  of  exultation  and  excitement  now.  He 
could  hardly  contain  his  savage  joy.  "Have  I  found  thee, 
oh,  my  enemy?"  he  cried  out  half  aloud.  Another  time, 
it  was  just  the  opposite  way.  "Hast  thou  found  me,  oh, 
my  enemy?"  he  had  cried  to  Warren  with  an  agonized 
cry  at  their  last  meeting  in  the  club  in  London. 

Warren  Relf,  gazing  up  in  surprise,  answered  him  back 
never  a  word;  he  only  thought  to  himself  silently  that  he 
was  not  and  had  never  been  Hugh  Massinger's  enemy. 
From  the  bottom  of  his  heart,  the  painter  pitied  him:  he 
pitied  him  ten  thousand  times  more  than  he  despised  him. 

They  stood  at  gaze  for  a  few  seconds.  Then,  "Where 
have  you  been?"  Hugh  asked  at  last  insolently.  The 
champagne  had  put  him  almost  beside  himself.  Drunk 
with  wine,  drunk  with  good  fortune,  he  allowed  his  true 
nature  to  peep  forth  for  once  a  little  too  obviously.  He 
would  make  this  fellow  Relf  know  his  proper  place  before 
gentlemen  at  last — a  mere  ignorant  upstart,  half  way  be- 
tween a  painter  and  a  common  sailor. 

"To  Paris,"  Warren  answered  with  curt  decision.  He 
was  in  no  humor  for  a  hasty  quarrel  to-day  with  this  half- 
drunken  madman. 

"What   for?"    Hugh   continued   as   rudely   as  before. 


AT  BAT.  U7 

Then  he  added  with  a  loud  and  ugly  laugh :  "You  need 
tell  me  no  lies.  I  know  already.  I've  found  you  out — 
To  see  my  cousin  Elsie  across  to  England." 

At  the  word,  Warren's  face  fell  somewhat  ominously. 
He  leaned  back,  half  irresolute,  in  the  corner  of  the  car- 
riage and  played  with  twitching  fingers  at  the  leather 
window-strop.  "You  are  right,"  he  answered  low,  in  a 
short  sharp  voice.  "I  never  lie.  I  went  to  escort  Miss 
Challoner  from  you  and  San  Remo." 

Hugh  flung  himself  into  an  attitude  of  careless  ease. 
This  colloquy  delighted  him.  He  had  the  fellow  at  bay. 
He  began  to  talk,  as  if  to  himself,  in  a  low  monologue. 
"Heine  says  somewhere,"  he  observed  with  a  sardonic 
smile,  directing  his  observation  into  blank  space,  as  if 
to  some  invisible  third  person,  "that  he  would  wish  to 
spend  the  evening  of  his  days  in  a  cottage  by  the  sea, 
within  sound  of  the  waves,  with  his  wife  and  children 
seated  around  him — and  a  large  tree  growing  just  outside 
h,is  grounds,  from  whose  branches  might  dangle  the  body 
of  his  enemy." 

Warren  Relf  sat  still  in  constrained  silence.  For  El- 
sie's sake,  he  would  allow  no  quarrel  to  arise  with  this 
madman,  flown  with  insolence  and  wine.  He  saw  at  once 
what  had  happened :  Massinger  was  drunk  with  luck  and 
champagne.  But  he  would  avoid  the  consequences.  He 
would  change  carriages  when  they  stopped  on  the  fron- 
tier at  Ventimiglia. 

The  bid  for  an  angry  repartee  had  failed.  So  Hugh 
tried  again ;  for  he  would  quarrel.  "A  great  many  mur- 
ders take  place  on  this  line,"  he  remarked  casually,  once 
more  in  the  air.  "It's  a  dangerous  thing,  they  tell  me, 
for  a  winner  at  Monte  Carlo  to  go  home  alone  in  a  car- 
riage by  himself  with  one  other  passenger." 

Still  Warren  Relf  held  his  peace,  undrawn. 

Hugh  tried  a  third  time.  He  went  on  to  himself  in  a 
musing  monologue.  "Any  man  who  travels  anywhere  by 


thousand  pounds;    eleven — thousand— pounds— sterling. 
I've  got  the  money  now  about  me.    There  it  is,  you  see, 


418  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

in  French  bank-notes.  A  very  large  sum.  Eleven — 
thousand — pounds — sterling." 

Still  Warren  said  nothing,  biting  his  lip  hard,  but  with 
an  abstracted  air  looked  out  of  the  window.  Hugh  was 
working  himself  up  into  a  state  of  frantic  excitement  now, 
though  well  suppressed.  Fate  had  delivered  his  enemy 
plump  into  his  hands,  and  he  meant  to  make  the  very  best 
use  of  his  splendid  opportunity. 

"A  fool  in  Paris  once  called  in  a  barber,"  he  went  on 
quietly,  with  a  studious  outer  air  of  calm  determination, 
"and  ordered  him,  for  a  joke,  to  shave  him  at  once,  with 
a  pistol  lying  before  him  on  the  dressing-table.  'If  your 
hand  slips  and  you  cut  my  skin,'  the  fool  said,  Til  blow 
your  brains  out'  To  his  surprise,  the  barber  began  with- 
out a  word  of  reply,  and  shaved  him  clean  with  the  utmost 
coolness.  When  he'd  finished,  the  patient  paid  down 
ten  pounds,  and  asked  the  fellow  how  he'd  managed  to 
keep  his  hand  from  trembling.  'Oh/  said  the  barber, 
'easy  enough:  it  didn't  matter  the  least  in  the  world  to 
me.  I  thought  you  were  mad.  If  my  hand  had  slipped, 
I  knew  what  to  do ;  I'd  have  cut  your  throat  without  one 
moment's  hesitation,  before  you  had  time  to  reach  out 
for  your  pistol.  I'd  say  it  was  an  accident;  and  any  jury 
in  all  Paris  would,  without  a  doubt,  at  once  have  acquitted 
me.' — The  story's  illustrative.  I  hope,  Mr.  Relf,  you  see 
its  applicability?" 

"I  do  not,"  Warren  answered,  surprised  at  last  into  an- 
swering back,  and  with  an  uneasy  feeling  that  Massinger 
was  developing  dangerous  lunacy.  "But  I  must  beg  you 
will  have  the  goodness  not  to  address  your  conversation 
to  me  any  farther." 

"The  application  of  my  remark,"  Hugh  went  on  to  him- 
self, groping  with  his  hand  in  his  pocket  for  his  revolver, 
and  withdrawing  it  again  as  soon  as  he  felt  quite  reassured 
that  the  deadly  weapon  was  safely  there,  "ought  at  once 
to  be  obvious  to  the  meanest  understanding.  There  are 
some  occasions  where  homicide  is  so  natural  that  every- 
body jumps  at  once  to  a  particular  conclusion. — Observe 
my  argument.  It  concerns  you  closely. — Many  murders 
have  taken  place  on  this  line — murders  of  heavy  winners 
at  Monte  Carlo.  Many  travelers  have  committed  mur- 


AT  BAY.  419 

derous  assaults  on  the  persons  of  winners  with  large  sums 
of  money  about  them. — Now  follow  me  closely.  I  give 
you  fair  warning. — If  a  winner  with  eleven  thousand 
pounds  in  his  pocket  were  to  get  by  accident  into  a  car- 
riage with  one  other  person,  and  a  quarrel  were  by  chance 
to  arise  between  them,  and  the  winner  in  self-defense  were 
to  fire  at  and  kill  that  other  person — do  you  think  any 
jury  in  all  the  world  would  convict  him  for  protecting  his 
life  from  the  aggressor?  No,  indeed,  my  good  sir!  In 
such  a  case,  the  other  person's  life  would  be  wholly  at  the 
offended  winner's  mercy. — Do  you  follow  my  thought? 
Do  you  understand  me  now? — Aha,  I  expected  so! 
Warren  Relf,  I've  got  you  in  my  power.  I  can  shoot  you 
like  a  dog ;  I  can  do  as  I  like  with  you." 

With  a  sudden  start,  Warren  Relf  woke  up  all  at  once  to 
a  consciousness  of  the  real  and  near  danger  that  thus  un- 
expectedly and  closely  confronted  him.  It  was  all  true; 
and  all  possible !  Hugh  was  mad — or  maddened  at  least 
with  play  and  drink:  he  deliberately  meant  to  take  his 
enemy's  life,  and  trust  to  the  authorities  accepting  his 
plausible  story  that  he  was  forced  to  do  so  in  self-defense 
or  in  defense  of  his  money. 

"You  blackguard!"  the  painter  cried,  as  the  truth  came 
home  to  him  in  all  its  naked  ugliness,  facing  Hugh  in  his 
righteous  indignation  like  a  lion.  "How  dare  you  venture 
on  such  a  cowardly  scheme?  How  dare  you  concoct  such 
a  vile  plot?  How  dare  you  confess  to  me  you  mean  to  put 
it  into  execution?" 

"I'm  a  gentleman,"  Hugh  answered,  smiling  across  at 
him  still  with  a  hideous  smile  of  pure  drunken  devilry, 
and  fingering  once  more  the  revolver  in  his  pocket.  "I'll 
shoot  no  man  without  due  explanation  and  reason  given. 
I'll  tell  you  why.  You've  tried  to  keep  Elsie  out  of  my 
way  all  these  long  years  for  your  own  vile  and  designing 
purposes — to  beguile  and  entrap  that  innocent  girl  into 
marrying  you — such  a  creature  as  you  are ;  and  by  your 
base  machinations  you've  succeeded  at  last  in  gaining  her 
consent  to  your  wretched  advances.  How  she  was  so 
lost  to  all  sense  of  shame  and  self-respect—she,  a  Mas- 
singer  on  her  mother's  side— as  to  give  her  consent 
such  a  degrading  engagement,  I  can't  imagine.  But  yot 


420  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

extorted  it  somehow — by  alternate  threats  and  cringing, 
I  suppose — by  scolding  her  and  cajoling  her — by  lies 
and  by  slanders — by  frightening  her  and  libeling  me — 
till  the  poor  terrified  girl,  tortured  out  of  her  wits,  de- 
cided to  accept  you,  at  last,  out  of  pure  weariness.  A  man 
would  be  ashamed,  I  say,  to  act  as  you  have  done ;  but  a 
thing  like  you — pah — there — it  revolts  me  even  to  talk  to 
you!" 

Warren  Relf  s  face  was  livid  crimson  with  fiery  indigna- 
tion; but  he  would  not  do  this  drunken  madman  the 
honor  of  contradicting  or  arguing  with  him.  Elsie  to 
him  was  far  too  sacred  and  holy  a  subject  to  brawl  over 
with  a  half-tipsy  fool  in  a  public  conveyance.  He  clutched 
his  hands  hard  and  kept  his  temper;  he  preferred  to  sit 
still  and  take  no  outer  notice. 

Hugh  mistook  his  enforced  calm  for  cowardice  and 
panic.  "Aha!''  he  cried  again,  "so  you  see,  my  fine  friend, 
you've  been  found  out!  You've  been  exposed  and  dis- 
credited. You've  got  no  defense  for  your  mean  secretive- 
ness.  Going  and  hiding  away  a  poor  terrified,  friendless, 
homeless  girl  from  her  only  relations  and  natural  pro- 
tectors— working  upon  her  feelings  by  your  base  vile 
tricks — setting  your  own  wretched  womankind  to  bully 
and  badger  her  by  day  and  by  night,  till  she  gives  her 
consent  at  last — out  of  pure  disgust  and  weariness,  no 
doubt — to  your  miserable  proposals.  The  sin  and  the 
shame  of  it!  But  you  forgot  you  had  a  man  to  deal  with 
as  well!  You're  brought  to  book  now.  I've  found  you 
out  in  the  nick  of  time,  and  I  mean  to  take  the  natural 
and  proper  advantage  of  my  fortunate  discovery.  Listen 
here  to  me,  now  you  infernal  sneak;  before  I  shoot  you, 
I  propose  to  make  you  know  my  plans.  I  shall  have 
my  legitimate  triumph  out  of  you  first.  I  shall  tell  you 
all;  and  then,  you  coward — I'll  shoot  you  like  a  dog,  and 
nobody  on  earth  will  ever  be  one  penny  the  wiser." 

Warren  saw  the  man  had  fairly  reached  the  final  stage 
of  dangerous  lunacy.  He  was  simply  raving  with  suc- 
cess and  excitement.  His  blood  was  up,  and  he  meant 
murder.  But  the  painter  fortunately  kept  his  head  cool. 
He  didn't  attempt  to  disarm  or  disable  him  as  yet;  he 
waited  to  see  whether  Hugh  had  or  had  not  a  pistol  in  hl« 


AT  BAY.  421 

pocket.  Perhaps  Hugh,  with  still  deeper  cunning,  was 
only  trying  to  egg  him  on  into  a  vain  quarrel,  that  he 
might  disgrace  him  in  the  end  by  a  horribly  plausible  and 
vindictive  charge  of  attempted  robbery. 

"I've  won  eleven  thousand  pounds,"  Hugh  went  on  dis- 
tinctly, with  marked  emphasis,  in  short  sharp  sentences. 
"My  wife's  dead,  and  I've  inherited  Whitestrand.  I  mean 
to  marry  Elsie  Challoner.  I  can  keep  her  now  as  she 
ought  to  be  kept;  I  can  make  her  the  wife  of  a  man  of 
property.  You  alone  stand  in  my  way.  And  I  mean  to 
shoot  you,  just  to  get  rid  of  you  offhand. — Sit  still  there 
and  listen :  don't  budge  an  inch  or,  by  Heaven,  I'll  fire  at 
once  and  blow  your  brains  out.  Lift  hand  or  foot  and 
you're  a  dead  man. — Warren  Relf,  I  mean  to  shoot  you. 
No  good  praying  and  cringing  for  your  life,  like  the  cow- 
ard that  you  are,  for  I  won't  listen.  Even  if  you  were  to 
renounce  your  miserable  claim  to  my  Elsie  this  moment, 
I  wouldn't  spare  you;  I'd  shoot  you  still.  You  shall  be 
punished  for  your  presumption — a  creature  like  you ;  and 
when  you're  dead  and  buried,  I  shall  marry  Elsie. — Think 
of  me,  you  cringing  miserable  cur — when  you're  dead  and 
gone,  enjoying  myself  forever  with  Elsie. — Yes,  I  mean 
to  make  you  drink  it,  down  to  the  very  dregs.  Hear  me 
out.  You  shall  die  like  a  dog;  and  I  shall  marry  Elsie." 

Warren  Relf's  eye  was  fixed  upon  him  hard,  watching 
him  close,  as  a  cat  watches,  ready  to  spring,  by  an  open 
mousehole.  This  dangerous  madman  must  be  disarmed 
at  all  hazards,  the  moment  he  showed  his  deadly  weapon. 
For  Elsie's  sake,  he  would  gladly  have  spared  him  that 
final  exposure.  But  the  man,  in  his  insolent  drunken 
bravado,  made  parley  useless  and  mercy  impossible.  It 
was  a  life-and-death  struggle  between  them  now.  War- 
ren must  disarm  him ;  nothing  else  was  feasible. 

As  he  watched  and  waited,  Hugh  dived  with  his  hand 
into  his  pocket  for  his  revolver,  and  drew  it  forth,  exult- 
ant, with  maniac  eagerness.  For  a  single  second,  he 
brandished  it,  loaded,  in  Warren's  face,  laughing  aloud  i 
his  drunken  joy;  then  he  pointed  it  straight  with  deadly 
resolve  at  the  painter's  forehead. 


422  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

CHAPTER  XLIX. 

THE  UNFORESEEN. 

Quick  as  lightning,  Relf  leaped  upon  his  frantic  assailant, 
and  with  one  powerful  arm,  stiffened  like  an  iron  bar, 
dashed  down  the  upraised  hand,  and  the  revolver  in  its 
grasp,  with  all  his  might,  toward  the  floor  of  the  carriage. 
A  desperate  struggle  ensued  in  that  narrow  compartment. 
The  two  men,  indeed,  were  just  evenly  matched.  Warren 
Relf,  strong  from  his  yachting  experience,  with  sinewy 
limbs  and  much  exercised  by  constant  outdoor  occupa- 
tion, fought  hard  in  sheer  force  of  thew  and  muscle,  with 
the  consciousness  that  therein  lay  his  one  chance  of  saving 
Elsie  from  still  further  misery.  Hugh  Massinger,  on  the 
other  hand,  well  knit  and  wiry,  now  mad  with  mingled 
excitement  and  drink,  grappled  wildly  with  his  adversary 
in  the  fierce  strength  of  pure  adventitious  nervous  energy. 
The  man's  whole  being  seemed  to  pour  itself  forth  with  a 
rush  in  one  franctic  outburst  of  insane  vigor.  He  gripped 
the  revolver  with  his  utmost  force,  and  endeavored  to 
wrench  it,  in  spite  of  Warren's  strong  hand,  from  his  ene- 
my's grasp,  and  to  turn  it  by  sheer  power  of  wrist  and 
arm  once  more  upon  Elsie's  new  lover.  "Blackguard!" 
he  cried,  through  his  clenched  teeth,  as  he  fought  tooth 
and  nail  with  frenzied  struggles  against  his  powerful  op- 
ponent. "You  shan't  get  off.  You  shall  never  have  her. 
If  I  hang  for  you  now,  I'll  kill  you  where  you  stand.  I've 
always  hated  you.  And  in  the  end  I  mean  to  do  for  you." 
With  a  terrible  effort,  Warren  wrested  the  loaded  re- 
volver at  last  from  his  trembling  hands.  Hugh  battled 
for  it  savagely  like  a  wild  beast  in  a  life-and-cleath  strug- 
gle. Every  chamber  had  a  cartridge  jammed  home  in  its 
recess.  To  fight  for  the  deadly  weapon  would  be  down- 
right madness.  If  it  went  off  by  accident  somebody  would 
be  wounded;  the  ball  might  even  go  through  the  wood- 
work into  the  adjoining  compartments.  Without  one 
moment's  hesitation  Warren  raised  the  fatal  thing  aloft 
in  his  hand  high  above  his  head.  The  window  on  the  sea- 
ward side  was  luckily  open.  As  he  swung  it,  Hugh  leaped 


THE  UNFORESEEN.  423 

up  once  more  and  tried  to  snatch  the  loaded  pistol  afresh 
from  his  opponent's  fingers ;  but  the  painter  was  too  quick 
for  him;  before  he  could  drag  down  that  uplifted  arm 
with  his  whole  weight  flung  upon  the  iron  biceps,  War- 
ren Relf  had  whirled  the  disputed  prize  round  his  head 
and  flung  it  in  an  arch  far  out  to  sea  through  the  open 
window.  The  railway  runs  on  a  ledge  of  rock  overhang- 
ing the  bay.  It  fell  with  a  splash  into  the  deep  blue  water. 
Hugh  Massinger,  thus  helplessly  balked  for  the  moment 
of  his  expected  revenge,  sprang  madly  on  his  foe  in  a 
wild  assault,  with  teeth  and  nails  and  throttling  ringers,  as 
a  wounded  tiger  springs  in  its  vindictive  death-throes  on 
the  broad  flanks  of  an-  infuriated  elephant. 

Next  instant  they  were  plunging  in  the  deep  arch  of  a 
tunnel,  and  continued  their  horrible  hand-to-hand  battle 
for  several  minutes  in  utter  darkness.  Rolling  and  grap- 
pling in  gloom  together,  they  rose  and  fell,  now  one  man 
on  top  and  now  the  other,  round  after  round,  like  a  couple 
of  angry  wrestlers.  The  train  rushed  out  into  the  light 
once  more  and  plunged  a  second  time  into  a  still  blacker 
tunnel.  But  still  they  fought  and  tore  one  another  fierce- 
ly. All  the  way  from  Monte  Carlo  to  the  frontier,  indeed, 
the  line  alternates  between  bold  ledges  that  just  overhang 
the  deep  blue  bays  and  tunnels  that  pierce  with  their  dark 
archways  the  intervening  headlands.  When  they  emerged 
a  second  time  upon  the  light  of  day,  Hugh  Massinger  had 
his  hands  tight  pressed  in  a  convulsive  grasp  upon  War- 
ren Relf's  throat;  and  Warren  Relf,  purple  and  black  in 
the  face,  was  tearing  them  away  with  horrible  contortions 
of  arms  and  legs,  and  striving  to  defend  himself  by  brute 
force  from  the  would-be  murderer's  close-gripped  clutches. 

"Aha!"  Hugh  cried,  as  he  held  his  enemy  down  on  the 
seat  with  a  gurgle  in  his  throat,  "I  have  you  now.  I've 
got  you ;  I've  done  for  you.  You  shall  choke  for  your 
insolence!  You  shall  choke — you  shall  choke  for  it." 

With  an  awful  rally  for  dear  life,  Warren  Relf  leaped 
up  and  turned  the  tables  once  more  upon  his  overspent 
opponent.  Seizing  Hugh  round  the  waist  in  his  powerful 
arms,  in  an  access  of  despair,  he  flung  him  from  him  as 
one  might  fling  a  child,  with  all  his  store  of  gathered 
energy  If  onlv  he  could  hold  the  man  at  bay  till  they 


424  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

reached  Mentone,  help  would  come — the  porters  would 
see  and  would  try  to  secure  him.  He  had  no  time  to 
think  in  the  hurry  of  the  moment  that  even  so  all  the  world 
would  believe  he  himself  was  the  aggressor,  and  Hugh 
Massinger,  with  that  great  roll  of  notes  stowed  away  in 
his  pocket,  was  the  injured  innocent.  Fighting  instinc- 
tively for  life  alone,  he  flung  his  mad  assailant  right  across 
the  carriage  with  his  utmost  force.  Hugh  staggered  and 
fell  against  the  door  of  the  compartment;  his  head  struck 
sharp  against  the  inner  brass  handle.  With  a  loud  cry,  the 
would-be  murderer  dropped  helpless  on  the  floor.  War- 
ren saw  his  temple  was  bleeding  profusely.  He  seemed 
quite  stunned — stunned  or  dead?  His  face,  which  but  a 
moment  before  had  glowed  livid  red,  grew  pale  as  death 
with  a  horrible  suddenness.  Warren  leaned  over  him, 
flushed  with  excitement,  and  hot  with  that  terrible  wild- 
beast-like  struggle.  Was  the  man  feigning,  or  was  he 
really  killed? — O  heavens,  would  they  say  he,  Warren, 
had  murdered  him? 

In  a  moment  the  full  horror  of  the  situation  came  over 
him. 

He  felt  Hugh's  pulse:  it  was  scarcely  beating.  He 
peered  into  his  eyes :  they  were  glazed  and  senseless.  He 
couldn't  tell  if  the  man  were  dead  or  alive;  but  he  stood 
aghast  now  with  equal  awe  at  either  horrible  and  unspeak- 
able predicament.  Only  four  minutes  or  so  more  till  Men- 
tone!  What  time  to  decide  how  to  act  in  the  interval?  O 
dear  heaven,  those  accusing,  tell-tale  bank-notes!  Those 
lying  bank-notes,  with  their  mute  false  witness  against  his 
real  intentions!  If  Hugh  was  dead,  who  would  ever  believe 
he  had  not  tried  to  rob  and  murder  him?  Whatever  came 
of  it,  he  must  try  to  recover  Hugh  from  his  dead-faint  at 
all  hazards.  Water,  water!  Oh,  what  would  he  not  give 
for  one  glass  of  water!  He  essayed  to  bind  up  the  wound 
on  the  head  with  his  own  handkerchief.  It  was  all  of  no 
avail:  the  wound  went  bleeding  steadily  on.  It  went 
bleeding  on;  that  looked  as  though  Hugh  were  still  alive, 
or  if  Hugh  were  dead,  they  would  take  him  for  a  murderer ! 

Four  minutes  only  till  they  reached  Mentone;  but  oh, 
what  an  eternity  of  doubt  and  terror!  In  one  single  vivid 
panoramic  picture,  the  whole  awfulness  of  his  situation 


THE  UNFORESEEN. 


426 


burst  full  upon  him.     He  saw  it  all-all,  just  as  it  would 
happen     What  other  interpretation   could   the   outside 
world  by  any  possibility  set  upon  the  circumstances?    A 
winner  at  Monte  Carlo,  returning  home  to  San  Remo 
with  a  vast  sum  in  bank-notes  concealed  about  his  person 
gets  into  a  carriage  alone  with  a  fellow-countryman  of  his 
acquaintance,  to  whom  he  would  naturally  at  once  confide 
the  fact  of  his  luck  and  his  large  winnings.     He  is  found 
dead  or  dying  in  the  train  at  the  next  station,  his  coat  torn 
after  a  frantic  struggle,  and  the  carriage  bearing  every  pos- 
sible sign  of  a  desperate  fight  for  life  between  aggressor 
and   defender.     His   revolver   gone,   his   head   broken, 
his  arms  black  with  numerous  bruises,  who  could  doubt 
that  he  had  fought  hard  for  his  life  and  his  money,  and 
succumbed  at  last  by  slow  degrees  to  the  most  brutal 
violence?    Who  would  ever  believe  the  cock-and-bull 
story  which  alone  Warren  Relf  could  set  up  in  self-jus- 
tification?    How  absurd  to  pretend  that  the  man  with 
the  money  was  the  real  aggressor,  and  that  the  man  with 
none  acted  only  in  pure  self-defense,  without  the  slightest 
intention  of  seriously  injuring  his  wild  assailant!     An  ac- 
cident, indeed!     No  jury  on  earth  would  accept  such  an 
incredible  line  of  defense.     It  was  palpably  past  all  rea- 
sonable belief — to  any  one  but  himself  and  Hugh  Mas- 
singer — on  the  very  face  of  it. 

And  then,  a  still  more  ghastly  scene  rose  clear  before 
his  eyes,  with  the  vividness  and  rapidity  of  a  great  crisis. 
At  such  supreme  moments,  indeed,  we  do  not  think  in 
words  or  logical  phrases  at  all ;  we  see  things  unrolled  in 
vast  perspective  as  a  living  tableau  of  events  before  us; 
we  feel  and  realize  past,  present,  and  future  in  incredible 
lightning-like  flashes  and  whirls  of  some  internal  sense; 
our  consciousness  ceases  to  be  bound  and  cabined  by  the 
narrow  limits  of  space  and  time:  a  single  second  suffices 
for  us  to  know  and  recognize  at  a  glance  what  in  other 
phases  it  would  take  us  a  whole  hour  deliberately  to  rep- 
resent by  analytic  stages  to  our  mental  vision.  Warren 
Relf,  alone  in  that  cramped  compartment  with  Hugh  Mas- 
singer,  or  Hugh  Massinger's  corpse — he  knew  not  which 
— beheld  in  his  mind's  eye  in  a  graphic  picture  a  court  of 
justice,  installed  and  inaugurated:  advocates  pleading  his 


426  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

case  in  vain:  a  juge  cT  instruction  cross-questioning  him 
mercilessly  with  French  persistence  on  ever)'  detail  of  the 
supposed  assault:  a  jury  of  stolid  bourgeois  listening 
with  saturnine  incredulity  in  every  line  of  their  faces  to 
his  improbable  explanations — a  delay — a  verdict — a  sen- 
tence of  death;  and  behind  all — Elsie,  Elsie,  Elsie,  Elsie. 

Therein  lay  the  bitterest  sting  of  the  whole  tragedy. 
That  Elsie  should  ever  come  to  know  he  had  been  forced 
by  circumstances,  however  imperious,  into  laying  violent 
hands  on  Hugh  Massinger,  was  in  itself  more  than  his 
native  equanimity  could  possibly  endure.  What  would 
Elsie  say?  That  was  his  one  distinct  personal  thought. 
How  could  he  ever  bring  himself  even  to  explain  the  sim- 
ple truth  to  her?  He  shrank  from  the  idea  with  a  deadly 
loathing.  She  must  never  know  Hugh  had  tried  to  mur- 
der him — and  for  her  as  the  prize.  She  must  never  know 
he  had  been  compelled  in  self-defense  to  fling  Hugh  from 
his  throat,  and  unwillingly  to  inflict  that  awful  wound — for 
death  or  otherwise — upon  his  bleeding  forehead. 

Three  minutes,  perhaps,  to  Mentone  still.  On  those 
three  minutes  hung  all  his  future — and  Elsie's  happiness. 

In  the  midst  of  the  confused  sea  of  images  that  surged 
up  in  endless  waves  upon  his  mind,  one  definite  thought 
alone  now  plainly  shaped  itself  in  clear-cut  mental  outline 
before  him.  He  must  save  Elsie — he  must  save  Elsie: 
at  all  hazards,  no  matter  how  great — let  him  live  or  die — 
he  must  save  Elsie.  Through  the  mist  of  horror  and 
agony  and  despair  that  dimmed  his  sight,  that  thought 
alone  loomed  clear  and  certain.  Save  Elsie  the  anguish  of 
that  awful  discovery:  save  Elsie  the  inexpressible  pain 
of  knowing  that  the  man  she  now  loved  and  the  man 
who  once  pretended  to  love  her,  had  closed  together  in 
deadly  conflict,  and  that  Warren  had  only  preserved  Hugh 
from  a  murderer's  guilt  by  himself  becoming,  in  a  moment 
of  despair,  perhaps  Hugh's  unwilling  and  unwitting  exe- 
cutioner. 

He  glanced  once  more  at  the  senseless  mass  that  lay 
huddled  in  blood  upon  the  floor  of  the  carriage.  Alu-e 
or  dead?  What  hope  of  recovery?  What  chance  of  resti- 
tution? What  room  for  repentance?  If  Hugh  lived, 
would  he  clear  Warren?  or  would  he  die  in  some  hospital 


THE  UNFORESEEN.  427 

with  a  lie  on  his  lips,  condemning  his  enemy  for  the  very 
assault  he  had  himself  so  madly  yet  deliberately  com- 
mitted? What  matter  to  Warren?  Whichever  way 
things  happened  to  turn,  the  pain  would  be  almost  the 
same  for  Elsie.  Concealment  was  now  the  only  possible 
plan.  He  must  conceal  it  all — all,  all,  from  Elsie. 

The  train  was  slowing  round  a  dangerpus  curve — a 
curve  where  the  line  makes  a  sharp  angle  round  a  project- 
ing point — a  triumph  of  engineering,  experts  consider  it 
— with  the  sheer  rock,  rising  straight  above,  and  the  blue 
sea  dimpling  itself  into  ripples  below.  He  moved  to  the 
door,  and  gazed  anxiously  out.  No  room  to  jump  just 
there;  the  rock  and  sea  hemmed  him  in  too  closely.  But 
beyond,  by  the  torrent,  a  loose  bank  of  earth  on  the  far- 
ther side  might  break  his  fall,  if  he  chose  to  risk  it.  Mad- 
ness, no  doubt,  ay,  almost  suicide;  but  with  only  two 
minutes  more  to  Mentone,  he  had  no  time  to  think  if  it 
were  madness  or  wisdom :  time  only  to  act,  to  act  for  the 
best,  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  while  action  of  some  sort 
still  was  possible.  At  such  times,  indeed,  men  do  not 
reason:  they  follow  only  the  strongest  and  deepest  im- 
pulse. Warren  Relf  did  not  wait  to  argue  out  the  results 
of  his  conduct  with  himself.  If  he  leaped  from  the  train, 
he  must  almost  certainly  be  stunned  or  maimed,  perhaps 
even  killed  outright  by  the  concussion.  At  best,  he  must 
soon  be  taken  by  the  myrmidons  of  justice  and  accused 
of  the  murder.  .To  get  away  unperceived,  along  that  sin- 
gle track  of  open  coast,  backed  up  in  the  rear  by  high 
mountains,  was  simply  impossible.  Had  he  stopped  to 
reason,  he  might  have  remained  where  he  was— and  lost 
all.  But  he  did  not  stop  to  reason;  he  only  felt  and  felt 
profoundly.  His  instincts  urged  him  to  leap  while  there 
was  still  time.  He  opened  the  door  as  he  reached  th 
torrent  and  looking  out  upon  the  bank  with  caut 
deliberation,  prepared  to  jump  for  it  at  the  proper  moment, 

The  train  was  slowing  much  more  distinctly  now. 
thought  the  brake  must  be  put  on  hard.    He  could  s 
jump  as  he  reached  the  corner  without  serious  danger 
He  stepped  with  one  foot  on  to  the  open  footboard      1 
wasn't  much  to  risk  for  Elsie.    A  single  plunge,  and  all 
would  be  settled. 


428  THIS  MORTAL,  COIL. 

CHAPTER  L. 

THE  CAP  MARTIN  CATASTROPHE. 

As  he  paused  there  one  second,  before  he  jumped,  he  wad 
dimly  aware  of  a  curious  fact  that  caught  his  attention, 
sideways,  even  at  that  special  moment  of  doubt  and 
danger:  many  other  doors  on  the  landward  side  of  the 
train  stood  also  open,  and  other  passengers  beside  himself, 
with  fear  and  surprise  depicted  visibly  on  their  pale  faces 
were  stepping  out,  irresolute,  just  as  he  himself  had  donn, 
upon  the  narrow  footboard.  Could  they  have  heard  the 
struggle?  he  wondered  vaguely  to  himself.  Could  they 
have  gained  some  hasty  inkling  of  the  tragic  event  that 
had  taken  place,  so  secretly,  all  unknown  as  he  supposed, 
in  his  own  compartment?  Had  some  neighboring  travel- 
er caught  faintly  the  muffled  sounds  of  a  desperate  fight? 
Had  he  suspected  an  attack  upon  some  innocent  passen- 
ger? Had  he  signalled  the  guard  to  stop  the  train?  for 
it  was  slowing  still,  slowing  yet  more  sensibly  and  certain- 
ly each  moment.  More  and  more  pale  faces  now  ap- 
peared at  the  doors;  and  a  Frenchman  standing  on  the 
footboard  of  the  next  compartment,  a  burly  person  of 
military  appearance,  with  au  authoritative  air,  cried  aloud 
in  a  voice  of  quick  command,  "Sautez,  done!  Sautez!" 
At  the  word,  Warren  leaped,  he  knew  not  why,  from  the 
doomed  carriage.  The  Frenchma'n  leaped  at  the  self- 
same moment.  All  down  the  train,  a  dozen  or  two  of  pas- 
sengers followed  suit  as  if  by  a  concerted  order.  Warren 
had  no  idea  in  his  own  mind  what  was  really  happening, 
but  he  knew  the  train  had  slackened  speed  immensely,  and 
that  he  had  landed  on  his  feet  and  hands  on  the  rubbly 
bank  with  no  more  result,  so  far  as  he  himself  could  see 
just  then,  than  a  sprained  ankle  and  some  few  bleeding 
wounds  on  his  knees  and  elbows. 

Next  instant  a  horrible  crash  resounded  through  the 
air,  and  bellowed  and  echoed  with  loud  reverberation 
from  the  rocky  walls  of  those  sheer  precipices.  Thud, 
thud,  thud  followed  close  on  the  crash,  as  carriage  after 
carriage  shocked  fiercely  against  the  engine  and  the  com- 


THE  CAP  MARTIN  CATASTROPHE.  429 

partments  in  front  of  it  Then  a  terrible  sight  met  his 
eyes.  The  train  had  just  reached  the  ledge  of  cliff  be- 
yond, and  with  a  wild  rocking  disappeared  all  at  once 
over  the  steep  side  down  into  the  sea  below.  Nothing  in- 
life  is  more  awful  in  its  unexpectedness  than  a  great  rail- 
way accident.  Before  Warren  had  even  time  to  know 
what  was  taking  place  by  his  side,  it  was  all  over.  The 
train  had  fallen  in  one  huge  mass  over  the  edge  of  the 
cliff,  and  Hugh  Massinger,  with  his  eleven  thousand 
pounds  safe  in  his  pocket,  was  hurried  away  without  warn- 
ing or  reprieve  into  ten  fathoms  deep  of  blue  Mediter- 
ranean. 

Everybody  remembers  the  main  features  of  that  terrific 
accident,  famous  in  the  history  of  French  railway  disasters 
as  the  Cap  Martin  catastrophe.  Shortly  after  passing 
Roquebrune  station  (where  the  through-trains  do  not 
stop),  one  of  the  engine-wheels  became  loosened  by  a  vio- 
lent shock  against  a  badly-laid  sleeper,  and,  thus  acting 
as  a  natural  brake,  brought  the  train  almost  to  a  stand- 
still for  a  few  seconds,  just  opposite  the  very  danger- 
ous ledge  known  locally  as  the  Borrigo  escarpment.  The 
engine  there  left  the  rails  with  a  jerk,  and  many  of  the 
passengers,  seeing  something  serious  was  likely  to  take 
place,  seized  the  opportunity,  just  before  the  crash,  of 
opening  the  doors  on  the  landward  side,  and  leaping  from 
the  train  while  it  had  reached  its  slowest  rate  of  motion, 
on  the  very  eve  of  its  final  disaster.  One  instant  later,  the 
engine  oscillated  violently  and  stopped  altogether;  the 
other  carriages  telescoped  against  it;  and  the  entire  train, 
thrown  off  its  balance  with  a  terrible  wrench,  toppled  over 
the  sheer  precipice  at  the  side  into  the  deep  water  that  skirts 
the  foot  of  the  neighboring  mountains.  That  was  the 
whole  familiar  story  as  the  public  at  large  came,  bit  by  bit, 
to  learn  it  afterwards.  But  for  a  moment,  the  stunned 
and  horrified  passengers  on  the  bank  of  the  torrent  only 
knew  that  a  frightful  accident  had  taken  place  with  incredi- 
ble rapidity,  and  that  the  train  itself,  with  many  of  their 
fellow  travelers  seated  within,  had  sunk  like  lead  in  the 
twinkling  of  an  eye  to  the  bottom  of  the  bay,  leaving  the 
few  survivors  there  on  dry  land  aghast  at  the  inexpressible 
suddenness  and  awfulness  of  this  appalling  calamity. 


430  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

As  for  Warren  Relf,  amid  the  horror  of  his  absorbing 
life-and-death  struggle  with  Hugh  Massinger,  and  the 
abiding  awe  of  its  terrible  consummation,  he  had  never 
even  noticed  the  angry  jerking  of  the  loosened  wheel,  the 
whirr  that  jarred  through  the  shaken  carriages,  the  grow- 
ing oscillation  from  side  to  side,  the  evident  imjninence 
of  some  alarming  accident.  Sudden  as  the  catastrophe 
was  to  all,  to  him  it  was  more  sudden  and  unexpected  than 
to  any  one.  Till  the  actual  crash  itself  came,  indeed,  he 
did  not  realize  why  the  other  passengers  were  hanging 
on  so  strangely  to  the  narrow  footboard.  The  whole 
episode  happened  in  so  short  a  space  of  time — thirty  sec- 
onds at  best — that  he  had  no  opportunity  to  collect  and 
recover  his  scattered  senses.  He  merely  recognized  at 
first  in  some  stunned  and  shattered  fashion  that  he  was 
well  out  of  the  fatal  train,  and  that  a  dozen  sufferers  lay 
stretched  in  evident  pain  and  danger  on  the  low  bank  of 
earth  beside  him. 

For  all  the  passengers  had  not  fared  so  well  in  their 
escape  as  he  himself  had  done.  Many  of  them  had  suf- 
fered serious  hurt  in  their  mad  jump  from  the  open  door- 
way, alighting  on  jagged  points  of  broken  stone,  or  rolling 
down  the  sides  of  the  steep  ravine  into  the  dry  bed  of  the 
winter  torrent.  The  least  injured  turned  with  one  accord 
to  help  and  tend  their  wounded  companions.  But  as  for 
the  train  itself,  it  had  simply  disappeared.  It  was  as  though 
it  had  never  been.  Scarcely  a  sign  of  it  showed  on  the 
unruffled  water.  Falling  sheer  from  the  edge  of  that  pre- 
cipitous crag  into  the  deep  bay,  it  had  sunk  like  a  stone  at 
once  to  the  very  bottom.  Only  a  few  fragments  of  broken 
wreckage  appeared  here  and  there  floating  loose  upon  the 
surface.  Hardly  a  token  remained  beside  to  show  the 
outer  world  where  that  long  line  of  laden  carriages  had 
toppled  over  bodily  into  the  profound  green  depths  that 
still  smiled  so  sweetly  between  Roquebrune  and  Mentone. 

For  a  while,  distracted  by  this  fresh  horror,  Warren 
could  only  think  of  the  dead  and  wounded.  His  owrn  torn 
and  blood-stained  condition  excited  no  more  attention  or 
curiosity  now  on  the  part  of  the  bystanders  than  that  of 
many  others  among  his  less  fortunate  fellow-passengers. 
Nor  did  he  even  reflect  with  any  serious  realization  that 


THE  CAP  MARTIN  CATASTROPHE.  431 

Elsie  was  saved  and  his  own  character  practically  vindi- 
cated. The  new  shock  had  deadened  the  sense  and  vivid- 
ness of  the  old  one.  In  the  face  of  so  awful  and  general 
a  calamity  as  this,  his  own  private  fears  and  doubts  and 
anxieties  seemed  to  shrink  for  the  moment  into  absolute 
insignificance. 

In  time,  however,  it  began  slowly  to  dawn  upon  his 
bewildered  mind  that  other  trains  might  come  up  from 
Monaco  or  Mentone  and  dash  madly  among  the  broken 
debris  of  the  shattered  carriages.  Whatever  caused  their 
own  accident  might  cause  accidents  also  to  approaching 
engines.  Moreover,  the  wounded  lay  scattered  about  on 
all  sides  upon  the  track,  some  of  them  in  a  condition 
in  which  it  might  indeed  be  difficult  or  even  dangerous 
to  remove  them.  Somebody  must  certainly  go  forward  to 
Mentone  to  warn  the  chef  de  gare  and  to  fetch  up  assist- 
ance. After  a  hurried  consultation  with  his  nearest  neigh- 
bors, Warren  took  upon  himself  the  task  of  messenger. 
He  started  off  at  once  on  this  needful  errand,  and  plunged 
with  a  heart  now  strangely  aroused  into  the  deep  darkness 
of  the  last  remaining  tunnel. 

His  sprained  ankle  caused  him  terrible  pain  at  every 
step;  but  the  pain  itself,  joined  with  the  consciousness  of 
performing  an  imperative  duty,  kept  his  mind  from  dwell- 
ing too  much  for  the  moment  on  his  own  altered  yet 
perilous  situation.  As  he  dragged  one  foot  wearily  after 
the  other  through  that  long  tunnel,  his  thoughts  concen- 
trated themselves  for  the  time  being  on  but  one  object — 
to  reach  Mentone  and  prevent  any  further  serious  accident 

When  he  arrived  at  the  station,  however,  and  dis- 
patched help  along  the  line  to  the  other  sufferers. from  the 
terrible  disaster,  he  had  time  to  reflect  in  peace  for  a  while 
upon  the  sudden  change  this  great  public  calamity  had 
wrought  in  his  own  private  position.  The  danger  of  mis- 
apprehension had  been  removed  by  the  accident  as  if  by 
magic.  Unless  he  himself  chose  to  reveal  the  facts,  n 
soul  on  earth  need  ever  know  a  word  of  that  desperate 
struggle  with  mad  Hugh  Massinger  in  the  wrecked  rail- 
wav  carriage.  Even  supposing  the  bodies  were  ultimately 
dredged  up  or  recovered  by  divers,  no  suspicion  coi 
now  possibly  attach  to  his  own  conduct.  The  wound  on 


432  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

Hugh's  head  would  doubtless  be  attributed  to  the  fall 
alone;  though  the  chance  of  the  body  being  recognizable 
at  all  after  so  horrible  a  catastrophe  would  indeed  be  slight 
considering  the  way  the  carriages  had  doubled  up  like  so 
much  trestle-work  upon  one  another  before  finally  falling. 
Elsie  was  saved;  that  much  at  least  was  now  secured. 
She  need  know  nothing.  Unless  he  himself  were  ever 
tempted  to  tell  her  the  ghastly  truth,  that  terrible  episode 
of  the  death-struggle  in  the  doomed  train  might  remain 
forever  a  sealed  book  to  the  woman  for  whose  sake  it  had 
all  been  enacted. 

Warren's  mind,  therefore,  was  made  up  at  once.  All 
things  considered,  it  had  become  a  sacred  duty  for  him 
now  to  hold  his  tongue  forever  and  ever  about  the  entire 
incident.  No  man  is  bound  to  criminate  himself;  above 
all,  no  man  is  bound  to  expose  himself  when  innocent  to 
an  unjust  yet  overwhelming  suspicion  of  murder.  But 
that  was  not  all.  Elsie's  happiness  depended  entirely  upon 
his  rigorous  silence.  To  tell  the  whole  truth,  even  to  her, 
would  be  to  expose  her  shrinking  and  delicate  nature  to 
a  painful  shock,  as  profound  as  it  was  unnecessary,  and  as 
lasting  as  it  was  cruel.  The  more  he  thought  upon  it, 
the  more  plain  and  clear  did  his  duty  shine  forth  before 
him.  Chance  had  supplied  him  with  a  strange  means  of 
honorable  escape  from  what  had  seemed  at  first  sight  an 
insoluble  dilemma.  It%would  be  folly  and  worse,  under 
his  present  conditions,  for  him  to  refuse  to  profit  by  its 
unconscious  suggestion. 

Yet  more:  he  must  decide  at  once  without  delay  upon 
his  line  of  action.  News  of  the  catastrophe  would  be 
telegraphed,  of  course,  immediately  to  England.  Elsie 
would  most  likely  learn  the  whole  awful  episode  that  very 
evening  at  her  hotel  in  London:  he  could  hear  the  very 
cries  of  the  street  boys  ringing  in  his  ears:  "Speshul  Edi- 
tion. Appalling  Railway  Accident  on  the  Riviayrer! 
Great  Loss  of  Life!  A  Train  precipitated  into  the  Med- 
iterranean!" If  not,  she  would  at  any  rate  read  the  alarm- 
ing news  in  an  agony  of  terror  in  the  morning  papers. 
She  knew  Warren  himself  wras  returning  to  San  Remo 
by  that  very  train.  She  did  not  know  that  Hugh  was 
likely  to  be  one  of  his  fellow-passengers.  She  must  not 


THE  CAP  MARTIN  CATASTROPHE.  433 

hear  of  the  accident  for  the  first  time  from  the  columns 
of  the  "Times"  or  the  'Tall  Mall  Gazette."  He  must  tele- 
graph over  at  once  and  relieve  beforehand  her  natural 
anxiety  for  her  future  husband's  safety.  But  Hugh's  name 
and  fate  need  not  be  mentioned,  at  least  for  the  present; 
he  could  reserve  that  revelation  for  a  more  convenient 
season.  To  publish  it,  indeed,  would  be  in  part  to  in- 
criminate himself,  or  at  least  to  arouse  unjust  suspicion. 

He  drove  to  the  telegraph  office,  worn  out  as  he  was 
with  pain  and  excitement,  and  dispatched  a  hasty  message 
that  moment  to  Elsie :  "There  has  been  a  terrible  accident 
to  the  train  near  Mentone,  but  I  am  not  hurt,  at  least  to 
speak  of — only  a  few  slight  sprains  and  bruises.  Particu- 
lars in  papers.  Affectionately,  Warren."  And  then  he 
drove  back  to  the  scene  of  the  catastrophe. 

It  was  a  week  before  all  the  bodies  were  dredged  up 
by  relays  of  divers  from  the  wreck  of  that  ill-fated  and 
submerged  train.  Hugh  Massinger's  was  one  of  the  last 
to  be  recovered.  It  was  found,  minus  a  large  part  of  the 
clothing.  The  sea  had  torn  off  his  coat  and  shirt.  The 
eleven  thousand  pounds  in  French  bank-notes  never 
turned  up  at  all  again.  His  money  indeed  had  perished 
with  him. 

They  buried  all  that  remained  of  that  volcank  life  on 
the  sweet  and  laughing  hillside  at  Mentone.  A  plain  mar- 
ble cross  marks  the  spot  where  he  rests.  On  the  plinth 
stand  graven  those  prophetic  lines  from  the  plaintive 
proem  to  "A  Life's  Philosophy  "- 

"Here,  by  the  haven  with  the  hoary  trees, 

O  fiery  poet's  heart,  lie  still: 
No  longer  strive  amid  tempestuous  seas 
To  curb  wild  waters  to  thy  lurid  will. 
Above  thy  grave 
Wan  olives  wave, 
And  oleanders  court  deep-laden  bees." 

That  nought  of  fulfilment  might  be  wanting  to  his  pray- 
er, Warren  Relf  with  his  own  hand  planted  a  blushing 
oleander  above  the  mound  where  that  fiery  poet's  heart 
lay  still  forever.  He  had  nothing  but  pity  in  his  soul 
for  Hugh's  wasted  powers.  A  splendid  life,  marred  in 


434  THIS  MORTAL  COlL. 

the  making-  by  its  own  headstrong  folly.  And  Winifred, 
who  loved  him,  and  whose  heart  he  broke,  lay  silent  in 
the  self-same  grave  beside  him. 


CHAPTER  LI. 

NEXT  OF  KIN  WANTED. 

The  recovery  of  Hugh's  body  from  the  shattered  train 
gave  Warren  Relf  one  needful  grain  of  internal  comfort. 
He  identified  that  pale  and  wounded  corpse  with  reverent 
care,  and  waited  in  solemn  suspense  and  unspoken  anxiety 
for  the  result  of  the  customary  post-mortem  examination. 
The  doctor's  report  reassured  his  soul.  Death  had  re- 
sulted, so  the  medical  evidence  conclusively  proved,  not 
from  the  violent  injuries  observed  on  the  skull,  and  appar- 
ently produced,  they  said,  by  a  blow  against  the  carriage 
door,  but  from  asphyxiation,  due  to  drowning.  Hugh 
was  still  aliv^  then,  when  the  train  went  over!  His  heart 
still  beat  and  his  breath  still  came  and  \vent  feebly  till  the 
actual  moment  of  the  final  catastrophe.  It  was  the  acci- 
dent, not  Warren's  hand,  that  killed  him.  Innocent  as 
Warren  knew  himself  to  be,  he  was  glad  to  learn  from  this 
authoritative  source  that  even  unintentionally  he  had  not 
made  himself  Hugh  Massinger's  accidental  executioner. 

But  in  any  case  they  must  break  the  news  gently  to 
Elsie.  Warren's  presence  was  needed  in  the  south  for  the 
time  being,  to  see  after  Winifred's  funeral  and  other  neces- 
sary domestic  arrangements.  So  Edie  went  over  to  Eng- 
land on  the  very  first  day  after  the  fact  of  Hugh's  dis- 
appearance in  the  missing  train  had  become  generally 
known  to  the  little  world  of  San  Remo,  to  soften  the  shock 
for  her  with  sisterly  tenderness.  By  a  piece  of  rare  good 
fortune,  Hugh  Massinger's  name  was  not  mentioned  at 
all  in  the  earlier  telegrams,  even  after  it  was  fairly  well 
known  at  Mentone  and  Monte  Carlo  that  the  lucky  win- 
ner whose  success  was  in  everybody's  mouth  just  then, 
had  perished  in  one  of  the  lost  carriages.  The  dispatches 
only  spoke  in  vague  terms  of  "an  English  gentleman  lately 


NEXT  OP  KIN  WANTED.  485 

arrived  on  the  Riviera,  who  had  all  but  succeeded  in  break- 
ing the  bank  that  day  at  Monte  Carlo,  and  was  returning 
to  San  Remo,  elated  by  success,  with  eleven  thousand 
pounds  of  winnings  in  his  pocket."  It  was  not  in  the 
least  likely  that  Elsie  would  dream  of  recognizing  her 
newly  bereaved  cousin  under  this  highly  improbable  and 
generalized  description — especially  when  Winifred,  as  she 
well  knew,  was  lying  dead  meanwhile,  the  victim  of  his 
cold  and  selfish  cruelty,  at  the  pension  at  San  Remo.  Edie 
would  be  the  first  to  bring  her  the  strange  and  terrible 
news  of  Hugh's  sudden  death.  Warren  himself  stopped 
behind  at  Mentone,  as  in  duty  bound,  to  identify  the  body 
formally  at  the  legal  inquiry. 

He  had  another  reason,  too,  for  wishing  to  break  the 
news  to  Elsie  through  Edie's  mouth  rather  than  person- 
ally. For  Edie  knew  nothing,  of  course,  of  the  deadly 
struggle  in  the  doomed  train,  of  that  hand-to-hand  battle 
for  life  and  honor;  and  she  could  therefore  with  truth 
unfold  the  whole  story  exactly  as  Warren  wished  Elsie 
first  to  learn  it.  For  her,  there  was  nothing  more  to  tell 
than  that  Hugh,  with  incredible  levity  and  brutal  want 
of  feeling,  had  gone  over  to  Monte  Carlo  to  gamble  openly 
at  the  public  tables,  on  the  very  days  while  his  poor  young 
wife,  killed  inch  by  inch  by  his  settled  neglect,  lay  dead 
in  her  lonely  lodging  at  San  Remo:  that  he  had  returned 
a  couple  of  evenings  later  with  his  ill-gotten  gains  upon 
the  fated  train:  and  that,  falling  over  into  the  sea  with 
the  carriages  from  which  Warren  just  barely  escaped  with 
dear  life,  he  was  drowned  in  his  place  in  one  of  the  shat- 
tered and  sunken  compartments.  That  was  all ;  and  that 
was  bad  enough  in  all  conscience.  What  need  to  burden 
Elsie's  gentle  soul  any  further  with  the  more  hideous 
concomitants  of  that  unspeakable  tragedy? 

Elsie  bore  the  news  with  far  greater  fortitude  than  Edie 
in  her  most  sanguine  mood  could  have  expected.  Wini- 
fred's death  had  sunk  so  deep  into  the  fibres  of  her  soul 
that  Hugh's  seemed  to  affect  her  far  less  by  comparison. 
She  had  learned  to  know  him  now  in  all  his  baseness, 
was  the  recognition  of  the  man's  own  inmost  nature  that 
had  cost  her  dearest.  "Let  us  never  speak  of  him  again, 
dear  Warren,"  she  wrote  to  her  betrothed,  a  few  days 


436  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

later.  "Let  him  be  to  us  as  though  he  had  never  existed. 
Let  his  name  be  not  so  much  as  mentioned  between  us-. 
It  pains  and  grieves  me  ten  thousand  times  more,  Warren, 
to  think  that  for  such  a  man's  sake  as  he  was,  I  should  so 
long  have  refused  to  accept  the  love  of  such  a  man  as  I 
now  know  you  to  be." 

Those  are  the  hardest  words  a  woman  can  utter.  To 
unsay  their  love  is  to  women  unendurable.  But  Elsie 
no  longer  shrank  from  unsaying  it.  Shame  and  remorse 
for  her  shattered  ideal  possessed  her  soul.  She  knew  she 
had  done  the  true  man  wrong  by  so  long  rejecting  him  for 
the  sake  of  the  false  one. 

At  sand-girt  Whitestrand,  meanwhile,  all  was  turmoil 
and  confusion.  The  news  of  the  young  Squire's  tragic 
death,  following  so  close  at  the  heel-  of  his  frail  little  wife's, 
spread  horror  and  shame  through  the  whole  community. 
The  vicar's  wife  was  all  agog  with  excitement.  The  reti- 
cule trembled  on  her  palpitating  wrist  as  she  went  the 
round  of  her  neighbors  with  the  surprising  intelligence. 
Nobody  knew  what  might  happen  next,  now  the  last  of 
the  Meyseys  was  dead  and  gone,  while  the  sandbanks 
were  spreading  half  a  mile  to  seaward,  and  the  very  river 
was  turned  from  its  course  by  encroaching  hummocks 
into  a  new-cut  channel.  The  mortgages,  to  be  sure,  were 
safe  with  their  money.  Not  only  was  the  property  now 
worth  on  a  rough  computation  almost  as  much  as  it  had 
ever  been,  but  Winifred's  life  had  been  heavily  insured, 
and  the  late  Mr.  Massinger's  estate,  the  family  attorney 
remarked  with  a  cheerful  smile,  was  far  more  than  solvent 
— in  fact,  it  would  prove  a  capital  inheritance  for  some 
person  or  persons  unknown,  the  heirs-at-law  and  next- 
of-kin  of  the  last  possessor.  But  good  business  lay  in 
store,  no  doubt,  for  the  profession  still.  Deceased  had 
probably  died  intestate.  Endless  questions  would  thus  be 
opened  out  in  delicious  vistas  before  the  entranced  legal 
vision.  The  marriage  being  subsequent  to  the  late  Mar- 
ried Woman's  Property  Act,  Mrs.  Massinger's  will,  if  any, 
must  be  found  and  proved.  The  next-of-kin  and  heir-at- 
law  must  be  hunted  up.  Protracted  litigation  would  prob- 
ably ensue;  rewards  would  be  offered  for  certificates  of 


NEXT  OF  KIN  WANTED.  437 

.i-  ref  °,rds  of.  impossible  marriages  would  be  freely 
advertised  for,  with  tempting  suggestions  of  pecuniary 
recompense  to  the  lucky  discoverer.  Research  would  be 
stimulated  in  parish  clerks;  affidavits  would  be  sworn  to 
with  charming  recklessness;  rival  claimants  would  com- 
mit unblushing  alternative  perjuries  on  their  own  account 
with  frank  disregard  of  common  probability.  It  would 
rain  fees.  The  estate  would  dissolve  itself  bodily  by  slow 
degrees  in  a  quagmire  of  expenses.  And  all  for  the  bene- 
fit of  the  good  attorneys!  The  family  lawyer,  in  the  char- 
acter of  Danae — for  this  occasion  only,  and  without  preju- 
dice—would hold  out  his  hands  to  catch  the  golden  show- 
er. A  learned  profession  would  no  doubt  profit  in  the 
end  to  a  distinct  amount  by  the  late  Mr.  Massinger's 
touching  disregard  of  testamentary  provision  for  his  un- 
known relations. 

Alas  for  the  prospects  of  the  learned  gentlemen !     The 
question  of  inheritance  proved  itself  in  the  end  far  easier 
and  less  complex  than  the  family  attorney  in  his  profes- 
sional zeal  had  at  first  anticipated.     Everything  unraveled 
itself  with  disgusting  simplicity.     The  estate  might  almost 
as  well  have  been  unencumbered.     The  late  Mrs.  Massin- 
ger  had  left  no  will,  and  the  property  had  therefore  de- 
volved direct  by  common  law  upon  her  surviving  hus- 
band.    This  was  awkward.     If  only  now,  any  grain  of 
doubt  had  existed  in  any  way  as  to  the  fact  that  the  late 
Mrs.  Massinger  had  predeceased  her  unfortunate  husband, 
legal  acumen  might  doubtless  have  suggested  innumerable 
grounds  of  action  for  impossible  claimants  on  either  side 
of  the  two  families.     But  unhappily  for  the  exercise  of. 
legal  acumen,  the  case  as  it  stood  was  all  most  horribly 
plain  sailing.     Hugh  Massinger,  Esquire,  having  inherited 
in  due  course  from  his  deceased  wife,  the  estate  must  go 
in  the  first  place  to  Hugh  Massinger  himself,  in  person. 
And  Hugh  Massinger  himself  having  died  intestate,  it 
must  go  in  the  next  place  to  Hugh  Massinger's  nearest 
representative.    True,  there  still  remained  the  agreeable 
and  exciting  research  for  the  missing  heir-at-law;  but  the 
pursuit  of  hunting  up  the  heir-at-law  to  a  given  known 
indisputable  possessor  is  as  nothing  in  the  eyes  of  a  keen 
sportsman  compared  with  the  Homeric  joy  of  battle  in- 


438  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

volved  in  the  act  of  setting  the  representatives  of  two  rival 
and  uncertain  claims  to  fight  it  out,  tooth  and  nail  to- 
gether, on  the  free  and  open  arena  of  the  Court  of  Probate. 
It  was  with  a  sigh  of  regret,  therefore,  that  the  family 
attorney,  good  easy  man,  drew  up  the  advertisement  which 
closed  forever  his  vain  hopes  of  a  disputed  succession  be- 
tween the  moribund  houses  of  Massinger  and  Meysey, 
and  confined  his  possibilities  of  lucrative  litigation  to  ex- 
ploiting the  house  of  Massinger  alone,  for  his  own  use, 
enjoyment,  and  fruition. 

It  was  some  two  or  three  weeks  after  Hugh  Massinger's 
tragic  death  that  Edie  Relf  chanced  to  observe  in  the 
Agony  Column  of  that  morning's  "Times,"  a  notice 
couched  in  the  following  precise  and  poetical  language : — 

"Hugh  Massinger,  Esquire,  deceased,  late  of  White- 
strand  Hall,  in  the  County  of  Suffolk. — Any  person  or 
persons  claiming  to  represent  the  heir  or  heirs-at-law  and 
next  of  kin  of  the  above-named  gentleman  (who  died  at 
Mentone,  in  the  Department  of  the  Alpes  Maritimes,  in 
the  French  Republic,  on  or  about  the  I7th  day  of  Novem- 
ber last  past)  are  hereby  requested  to  apply  immediately 
to  Alfred  Heberden,  Esq.,  Whitestrand,  Suffolk,  solicitor 
to  the  said  Hugh  Massinger." 

Edie  mentioned  the  matter  at  once  to  Warren,  who  had 
come  over  from  France  as  soon  as  he  had  completed  the 
necessary  arrangements  at  San  Remo  and  Mentone;  but 
Warren  heard  it  all  with  extreme  disinclination.  He 
couldn't  bear  even  to  allude  to  the  fact  in  speaking  to 
Elsie.  Directly  or  indirectly,  he  could  never  inherit  the 
estate  of  the  man  whose  life  he  had  been  so  nearly  instru- 
mental in  shortening.  And  if  Elsie  was  soon,  as  he  hoped, 
to  become  his  wife,  he  would  necessarily  participate  in 
whatever  benefit  Elsie  might  derive  from  inheriting  the 
relics  of  Hugh  Massinger's  ill-won  Whitestrand  property. 

"No,  no,"  he  said.  "The  estate  was  simply  the  price  of 
blood.  He  married  that  poor  little  woman  for  nothing 
else  but  for  the  sake  of  Whitestrand.  He  killed  her  by 
slow  degrees  through  his  neglect  and  cruelty.  If  he 
hadn't  married  her,  he  would  never  have  been  master  of 
that  wretched  place:  if  he  hadn't  married  her,  he  would 
have  had  nothing  of  his  own  to  leave  to  Elsie.  I  can't 


NEXT  OF  KIN  WANTED.  439 

touch  it,  and  I  won't  touch  it    So  that's  flat,  Edie.    It's 
the  price  of  blood.     Let  it,  too,  perish  with  him." 

"But  oughtn't  you  at  least  to  mention  it  to  Elsie?"  Edie 
asked,  with  her  plain  straightforward  English  common- 
sense.  "It's  her  business  more  than  it's  yours,  you  know, 
Warren.  Oughtn't  you  at  least  to  give  her  the  option  of 
accepting  or  refusing  her  own  property? — It's  very  kind 
of  you,  of  course,  to  decide  for  her  beforehand  so  cava- 
lierly.— Perhaps,  you  see,  when  she  learns  she's  an  heir- 
ess, she  may  be  inclined  to  transfer  her  affections  else- 
where." 

Warren  smiled.  That  was  a  point  of  view  that  had 
never  occurred  to  him.  Your  male  lover  makes  so  sure 
of  his  prey:  he  hardly  allows  in  his  own  mind  the  possi- 
bility of  rejection.  But  still  he  prevaricated.  "I  wouldn't 
tell  her  about  it,  just  yet  at  least,"  he  answered  hesitating- 
ly. "We  don't  know,  after  ail,  that  Elsie's  really  the  heir- 
at-law  at  all,  if  it  comes  to  that.  Let's  wait  and  see.  Per- 
haps some  other  claimant  may  turn  up  for  the  property." 

"Perhaps,"  Edie  replied,  with  her  oracular  brevity. 
"And  perhaps  not.  There's  nothing  on  earth  more  elas- 
tic in  its  own  way  than  a  good  perhaps.  India-rubber 
bands  are  just  mere  child's  play  to  it. — Suppose,  then,  we 
pin  it  down  to  a  precise  limit  of  time,  so  as  to  know  exactly 
where  we  stand,  and  say  that  if  the  estate  isn't  otherwise 
claimed  within  six  weeks,  we'll  break  it  to  Elsie,  and  allow 
her  to  decide  for  herself  in  the  matter?"  ^ 

"But  how  shall  we  know  whether  it's  claimed  or  not?' 
Warren  asked  dubiously. 

"My  dear,  there  exists  in  this  realm  of  England  a  useful 
institution  known  to  science  as  a  penny  post,  by  means  of 
which  a  letter  may  be  safely  and  inexpensively  conveyed 
even  to  so  remote  and  undistinguished  a  personage  as 
Alfred  Heberden,  Esquire,  solicitor  to  the  deceased, 
Whitestrand,  Suffolk.— I  propose,  in  fact,  to  write  and 
ask  him." 

Warren  groaned.     It  was  an  awkward  fix. 
he  could  shirk  the  whole  horrid  business.     To  be  saddled 
against  vour  will  with  a  landed  estate  that  you  don  t  want 
is  a  predicament  that  seldom  disturbs  a  modest  gei 
man's  peace  of  mind  anywhere.     But  he  saw  no  pos 


440  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

way  out  of  the  odd  dilemma.  Edie  was  right,  after  all, 
no  doubt.  As  yet,  at  least,  he  had  no  authority  to  answer 
in  any  way  for  Elsie's  wishes.  If  she  wanted  Whitestrand, 
it  was  hers  to  take  or  reject  as  she  wished,  and  hers  only. 
Still,  he  salved  his  conscience  with  the  consolatory  idea 
that  it  was  not  actually  compulsory  upon  him  to  show 
Elsie  any  legal  advertisement,  inquiry,  or  suggestion 
which  might  happen  to  emanate  from  the  solicitors  to  the 
estate  of  the  late  Hugh  Massinger.  So  far  as  he  had  any 
official  cognizance  of  the  facts,  indeed,  the  heirs-  executors 
and  assigns  of  the  deceased  had  nothing  on  earth  to  do  in 
any  way  with  Elsie  Challoner,  of  San  Remo,  Italy.  Sec- 
ond cousinhood  is  at  best  a  very  vague  and  uncertain  form 
of  relationship.  He  decided,  therefore,  not  without  some 
internal  qualms,  to  accept  Edie's  suggested  compromise 
for  the  present,  and  to  wait  patiently  for  the  matter  in 
hand  to  settle  itself  by  spontaneous  arrangement. 

But  Alfred  Heberden,  Esquire,  solicitor  to  the  deceased, 
acted  otherwise.  He  had  failed  to  draw  any  satisfactory 
communications  in  answer  to  his  advertisement  save  one 
from  a  bogus  firm  of  so-called  Property  Agents,  the  pro- 
prietors of  a  fallacious  list  of  Next  of  Kin  Wanted,  and 
one  from  a  third-rate  pawnbroker  in  the  Borough  Road, 
whose  wife's  aunt  had  once  married  a  broken-down  rail- 
way porter  of  the  name  of  Messenger,  from  Weem  in 
Shropshire,  and  who  considered  himself,  accordingly,  the 
obvious  representative  and  heir-at-law  of  the  late  Hugh 
Massinger  of  the  Utter  Bar,  and  of  Whitestrand  Hall,  in 
Suffolk,  Esquire,  deceased  without  issue.  Neither  of  these 
applications,  however,  proving  of  sufficient  importance 
to  engage  the  attention  of  Mr.  Alfred  Heberden's  legal 
mind,  that  astute  gentleman  proceeded  entirely  on  his  own 
account  to  investigate  the  genealogy  and  other  antecedents 
of  Hugh  Massinger,  with  a  single  eye  to  the  discovery  of 
the  missing  inheritor  of  the  estate,  envisaged  as  a  person 
from  whom  natural  gratitude  would  probably  wring  a 
substantial  solatium  to  the  good  attorney  who  had  proved 
his  title.  And  the  result  of  his  inquiries  into  the  Massin- 
ger pedigree  took  tangible  shape  at  last,  a  week  or  two 
later,  in  a  second  advertisement  of  a  more  exact  sort, 
which  Edie  Relf,  that  diligent  and  careful  student  of  the 


THE  TANGLE  RESOLVES  ITSELF.  441 

second  column,  the  most  interesting  portion  of  the  whole 
newspaper  to  Eve's  like-minded  daughters,  discovered  and 
pondered  over  one  foggy  morning  in  the  blissful  repose 
of  128,  Bletchingley  Road,  South  Kensington. 

"Challoner:  Heir-at-law  and  Next  of  Kin  Wanted.  Es- 
tate of  Hugh  Massinger,  Esquire,  deceased,  intestate. — 
If  this  should  meet  the  eye  of  Elsie,  daughter  of  the  late 
Rev.  H.  Challoner,  and  Eleanor  Jane,  his  wife,  formerly 
Eleanor  Jane  Massinger,  of  Chudleigh,  Devonshire,  she 
is  requested  to  put  herself  into  communication  with  Al- 
fred Heberden,  Esq.,  Whitestrand,  Suffolk,  when  she  may 
hear  of  something  greatly  to  her  advantage." 

Edie  took  the  paper  up  at  once  to  Warren.  "For  'may' 
read  'will,' "  she  said  pointedly.  "Lawyers  don't  advertise 
unless  they  know.  I  always  understood  Mr.  Massinger 
had  no  living  relations  except  Elsie.  This  question  has 
reached  boiling-point  now.  You'll  have  to  speak  to  her 
after  that  about  the  matter." 


CHAPTER  LII. 

THE  TANGLE  RESOLVES  ITSELF. 

"You  must  never,  never  take  it,  Elsie,"  Warren  said  ear- 
nestly, as  Elsie  laid  down  the  paper  once  more  and  wiped 
a  tear  from  her  eye  nervously.  "It  came  to  him  through 
that  poor  broken-hearted  little  woman,  you  know.  He 
should  never  have  married  her;  he  should  never  have 
o  wned  it.  It  was  never  truly  or  honestly  his,  and  therefore 
it  isn't  yours  by  right.  I  couldn't  bear,  myself,  to  touch 
a  single  penny  of  it." 

Elsie  looked  up  at  him  with  a  twitching  face.  "Do  you 
niake  that  a  condition,  Warren?"  she  asked,  all  tremulous. 

Warren  paused  and  hesitated,  irresolute,  for  a  moment. 
"Do  I  make  it  a  condition?"  he  answered  slowly.  "My 
darling,  how  can  I  possibly  talk  of  making  conditions  or 
bargains  with  you?  But  I  could  never  bear  to  think  that 
wife  of  mine  would  touch  one  penny  of  that  ill-gotten 
money." 


442  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

"Warren,"  Elsie  said,  in  a  very  soft  voice — they  were 
alone  in  the  room  and  they  talked  like  lovers — "I  said  to 
myself  more  than  once  in  the  old,  old  days — after  all  that 
was  past  and  done  forever,  you  know,  dear — I  said  to 
myself:  'I  would  never  marry  any  man  now,  not  even 
if  I  loved  him — loved  him  truly — unless  I  had  money  of 
my  own  to  bring  him.'  And  when  I  began  to  know  I 
was  getting  to  love  you — when  I  couldn't  any  longer  con- 
ceal from  myself  the  truth  that  your  tenderness  and  your 
devotion  had  made  me  love  you  against  my  will — I  said 
to  myself  again,  more  firmly  than  ever:  'I  will  never  let 
him  take  me  thus  penniless.  I  will  never  burden  him 
with  one  more  mouth  to  feed,  one  more  person  to  house 
and  clothe  and  supply,  one  more  life  to  toil  and  moil  and 
slave  for.  Even  as  it  is,  he  can't  pursue  his  art  as  he  ought 
to  pursue  it;  he  can't  give  free  play  to  his  genius  as  his 
genius  demands,  because  he  has  to  turn  aside  from  his  own 
noble  and  exquisite  ideals  to  suit  the  market  and  to  earn 
money.  I  won't  any  further  shackle  his  arm.  I  won't 
any  further  cramp  his  hand — his  hand  that  should  be  as 
free  as  the  air  to  pursue  unhampered  his  own  grand  and 
beautiful  calling.  I  will  never  marry  him  unless  I  can 
bring  him  at  least  enough  to  support  myself  upon.' — And 
just  the  other  day,  you  remember,  Warren — that  day  at 
San  Remo  when  I  admitted  at  last  what  I  had  known  so 
long  without  ever  admitting  it,  that  I  loved  you  better  than 
life  itself — I  said  to  you  still:  'I  am  yours,  at  heart.  But 
I  can't  be  yours  really  for  a  long  time  yet.  No  matter  why. 
I  shall  be  yours  still  in  myself,  for  all  that.' — Well,  I'll  tell 
you  now  why  I  said  those  words. — Even  then,  darling, 
I  felt  I  could  never  marry  you  penniless." 

She  paused,  and  looked  up  at  him  with  an  earnest  look 
in  her  true  gray  eyes,  those  exquisite  eyes  of  hers  that 
no  lover  could  see  without  an  intense  thrill  through  his 
inmost  being.  Warren  thrilled  in  response,  and  won- 
dered what  could  next  be  coming.  "And  you're  going 
to  tell  me,  Elsie,"  he  said,  with  a  sigh,  "that  you  can't 
marry  me  unless  you  feel  free  to  accept  Whitestrand?" 

Elsie  laid  her  head  with  womanly  confidence  on  his 
strong  shoulder.  "I'm  going  to  tell  you,  darling,"  she 
answered,  with  a  sudden  outburst  of  unchecked  emotion, 


THE  TANGLE  RESOLVES  ITSELF.  443 

"that  I'll  marry  you  now,  Whitestrand  or  no  Whitestrand. 
I'll  do  as  you  wish  in  this  and  in  everything.  I  love  you 
so  dearly  to-day,  Warren,  that  I  can  even  burden  you  with 
myself,  if  you  wish  it:  I  can  throw  myself  upon  you  with- 
out reserve:  I  can  take  back  all  I  ever  thought  or  said, 
and  be  happy  anywhere,  if  only  you'll  have  me,  and  make 
me  your  wife,  and  love  me  always  as  I  myself  love  you. 
I  want  nothing  that  ever  was  his ;  I  only  want  to  be  yours, 
Warren." 

Nevertheless,  Mr.  Alfred  Heberden  did  within  one  week 
of  that  date  duly  proceed  in  proper  form  to  prove  the  claim 
of  Elsie  Challoner,  of  128,  Bletchingley  Road,  in  the  parish 
of  Kensington,  spinster,  of  no  occupation,  to  the  intestate 
estate  of  Hugh  Massinger,  Esquire,  deceased,  of  White- 
slrand  Hall,  in  the  county  of  Suffolk. 

The  fact  is,  an  estate,  however  acquired,  must  needs 
belong  to  somebody  somewhere;  and  since  either  Elsie 
must  take  it  herself,  or  let  some  other  person  with  a  worse 
claim  endeavor  to  obtain  it,  Warren  and  she  decided,  upon 
further  consideration,  that  it  would  be  better  for  her  to 
dispense  the  revenues  of  Whitestrand  for  the  public  good, 
than  to  let  them  fall  by  default  into  the  greedy  clutches  of 
the  enterprising  pawnbroker  in  the  Borough  Road,  or  be 
swallowed  up  for  his  own  advantage  by  any  similar  ab- 
sorbent medium  elsewhere.  From  the  very  first,  indeed, 
they  were  both  firmly  determined  never  to  spend  one  shill- 
ing of  the  estate  upon  their  own  pleasures  or  their  own  ne- 
cessities. But  if  wealth  is  to  be  dispensed  in  doing  good 
at  all,  it  is  best  that  intelligent  and  single-hearted  people 
should  so  dispense  it,  rather  than  leave  it  to  the  tender 
mercies  of  that  amiable  but  somewhat  indefinite  institu- 
tion, the  Court  of  Chancery.  Warren  and  Elsie  decided, 
therefore,  at  last  to  prosecute  their  legal  claim,  regarding 
themselves  as  trustees  for  the  needy  or  helpless  of  Great 
Britain  generally,  and  to  sell  the  estate  when  once  obtained, 
for  the  first  cash  price  offered,  investing  the  sum  in  consols 
in  their  own  names,  as  a  virtual  trust-fund,  to  be  employed 
by  themselves  for  such  special  purposes  as  seemed  best  to 
both  in  the  free  exercise  of  their  own  full  and  unfettered 
discretion.  So  Mr.  Alfred  Heberden's  advertisement  bore 


444  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

good  fruit  in  due  season ;  and  Elsie  did  at  last,  in  name  at 
least,  inherit  the  manor  and  estate  of  Whitestrand. 

But  neither  of  them  touched  one  penny  of  the  blood- 
money.  They  kept  it  all  apart  as  a  sacred  fund,  to  be  used 
only  in  the  best  way  they  knew  for  the  objects  that  Wini- 
fred in  her  highest  moods  might  most  have  approved  of. 

And  this,  as  Elsie  justly  remarked,was  really  the  very 
best  possible  arrangement.  To  be  sure,  she  no  longer  felt 
that  shy  old  feeling  against  coming  to  Warren  unpro- 
vided and  penniless.  She  was  content  now,  as  a  wife 
should  be,  to  trust  herself  implicitly  and  entirely  to  her 
husband's  hands.  Warren's  art  of  late  had  every  day  been 
more  sought  after  by  those  who  hold  in  their  laps  the 
absolute  disposal  of  the  world's  wealth,  and  there  was  far 
less  fear  than  formerly  that  the  cares  of  a  household 
would  entail  on  him  the  miserable  and  degrading  necessity 
for  lowering  his  own  artistic  standard  to  meet  the  inferior 
wishes  and  tastes  of  possible  purchasers,  with  their  vulgar 
ideals.  But  it  was  also  something  for  each  of  them  to  feel 
that  the  other  had  thus  been  seriously  tried  by  the  final 
test  of  this  world's  gold — tried  in  actual  practice  and  not 
found  wanting.  Few  pass  through  that  sordid  crucible 
unscathed :  those  that  do  are  of  the  purest  metal. 

On  the  very  day  when  Warren  and  Elsie  finally  fixed  the 
date  for  their  approaching  wedding,  the  calm  and  happy 
little  bride-elect  came  in  with  first  tidings  of  the  accom- 
plished arrangement,  all  tremors  and  blushes,  to  her  faith- 
ful Edie.  To  her  great  chagrin,  however,  her  future  sister- 
in-law  received  the  news  of  this  proximate  family  event 
with  an  absolute  minimum  of  surprise  or  excitement. 
"You  don't  seem  to  be  in  the  least  astonished,  dear,"  Elsie 
cried,  somewhat  piqued  at  her  cool  reception.  "Why 
anybody'd  say,  to  see  the  way  you  take  it,  you'd  known  it 
all  a  clear  twelvemonth  ago !" 

"So  I  did,  my  child — all  except  the  mere  trifling  detail 
of  the  date,"  Edie  answered  at  once  with  prompt  common- 
sense,  and  an  arch  look  from  under  her  dark  eyebrows. 
"In  fact,  I  arranged  it  all  myself  most  satisfactorily  before- 
hand. But  what  I  was  really  thinking  of  just  now  was 
simply  this — why  shouldn't  one  cake  do  duty  for  both 
at  once,  Elsie?" 


THE  TANGLE  RESOLVES  ITSELF.  445 

"For  both  at  once,  Edie?  For  me  and  Warren?  Why, 
of  course,  one  cake  always  does  do  for  the  bride  and  bride- 
groom together,  doesn't  it?  I  never  heard  of  anybody 
having  a  couple,  darling." 

"What  a  sweet  little  silly  you  are,  you  dear  old  goose, 
you!  Are  you  two  the  only  marriageable  people  in  the 
universe,  then?  I  didn't  mean  for  you  and  Warren  at  all, 
of  course ;  I  meant  for  you  and  myself,  stupid." 

"You  and  myself!"  Elsie  echoed,  bewildered.  "You 
and  myself,  did  you  say,  Edie?" 

"Why,  yes,  you  dear  old  blind  bat,  you,"  Edie  went  on 
placidly,  with  an  abstracted  air ;  "we  might  get  them  both 
over  the  same  day,  I  think  seriously:  kill  two  weddings, 
so  to  speak,  with  one  parson.  They're  such  a  terrible 
nuisance  in  a  house  always." 

"Two  weddings,  my  dear  Edie?"  Elsie  cried  in  surprise. 
"Why,  what  on  earth  are  you  ever  talking  about?  I 
don't  understand  you." 

"Well,  Mr.  Hatherley's  a  very  good  critic,"  Edie  an- 
swered, with  a  twinkle:  "he's  generally  admitted  to  have 
excellent  taste ;  and  he  ventured  the  other  day  on  a  critical 
opinion  in  my  presence  which  did  honor  at  once  to  the 
acuteness  of  his  perceptions  and  the  soundness  and  depth 
of  his  aesthetic  judgment.  He  told  me  to  my  face,  with 
the  utmost  gravity,  I  was  the  very  sweetest  and  prettiest 
girl  in  all  England." 

"And  what  did  you  say  to  that,  Edie?"  Elsie  asked, 
amused,  with  some  dawning  perception  of  the  real  mean- 
ing of  this  queer  badinage. 

"I  told  him,  my  dear,  I'd  always  considered  him  the 
ablest  and  best  of  living  authorities  on  artistic  matters,  and 
that  it  would  ill  become  my  native  modesty  to  differ  from 
his  opinion  on  such  an  important  question,  in  which,  per- 
haps, that  native  modesty  itself  might  unduly  bias^  me  t 
an  incorrect  judgment  in  the  opposite  direction.  So  then 
he  enforced  his  critical  view  in  a  practical  way  by  promptly 
kissing  me." 

"And  you  didn't  object?" 

"On  the  contrary,  my  child,  I  rather  liked  i 
wise." 

"After  wftkh?" 


446  THIS  MORTAL  COIL. 

"After  which  he  proceeded  to  review  his  own  character 
and  prospects  in  a  depreciatory  way,  that  led  me  gravely 
to  doubt  the  accuracy  of  his  judgment  in  that  respect;  and 
he  finished  up  at  last  by  laying  those  very  objects  he  had 
just  been  depreciating,  his  hand  and  heart,  at  the  foot  of 
the  throne,  metaphorically  speaking,  for  the  sweetest  girl 
in  all  England  to  do  as  she  liked — accept  or  reject  them." 

"And  the  sweetest  girl  in  all  England?" — Elsie  asked, 
smiling. 

"Unconditionally  accepted  with  the  most  pleasing 
promptitude. — You  see,  my  dear,  it'll  be  such  a  splendid 
thing  for  Warren,  when  he  sets  up  house,  to  have  an  in- 
fluential art  critic  bound  over,  as  it  were,  not  to  speak 
evil  against  him,  by  being  converted  beforehand  into  his 
own  brother-in-law. — Besides  which,  you  know,  I  happen, 
Elsie,  to  be  ever  so  much  in  love  with  him." 

"That's  a  good  thing,  Edie." 

"My  child,  I  considered  it  such  an  extremely  good 
thing  that  I  ran  upstairs  at  once  and  had  a  regular  jolly 
old-fashioned  cry  over  it — Elsie,  Arthur's  a  dear  good 
fellow. — And  you  and  I  can  be  married  together.  We've 
always  been  sisters,  ever  since  we've  known  each  other. 
And  now  we'll  be  sisters  even  more  than  ever." 


THE   END. 


M   .   -:.i:..   .  ;         •. 


A     000  038  347     1 


